And winter is here!
It started snowing Friday. It finally stopped today. There's between 1-2 feet on the ground in places.
The storm was almost completely windless. Most of the trees still have all their leaves as well. Those things combined to cause massive snow and ice build-up on trees, resulting in many downed trees and branches.
Here's what I saw when I got home this morning:
The gate to the house is under there somewhere. Here's what it looks like in the daylight:
Crawling my way through there, I wouldn't have been surprised if I'd ended up in Narnia.
The tree outside the front door lost three big limbs. Luckily, the one that had bent precariously over the top of the house didn't snap off. I can't get close enough to tell yet, but I think the apple tree may have split in two:
Here are the trees that line the irrigation creek, laden down with snow and ice:
It's hard to get a shot of damage, but this is the tree outside the door. One large branch is leaning heavily on the fence that separates us from the next lot; if it takes out the fence, there will be trouble with their three large dogs.
Ike decided he had been cooped up enough, and it was playtime, bad joints be damned!
Somehow, he even managed to find his ball under all that snow:
Jinx's second home is underneath the trailer. He went outside this morning, then underneath, and seemed surprised and annoyed that the snow was still here when he came back out.
I had to rescue him.
Scooter has been sticking his head out the door and sniffing, trying to figure out what's going on. Finally, he got brave enough to go out and explore.
He seems to actually like the snow! Silly cat. I spent 30 minutes shoveling, shaking snow off of branches (and all over me, of course) and trimming back branches as well. At least now we can get out without crawling. There's going to be a lot of clean up as the snow melts throughout the week, and my emergency quick-and-dirty weatherization of the house really needs to be properly finished. By Friday, this snow should all be gone.
Just in time for the next storm to probably come along.