For real snow you need real machinery

Last night I took note of the epic snow and the predicted for today frigid temperatures and wind chill and told TOPWLH that we might not get out until it warms up a little on, oh, say Tuesday. I was online this morning after breakfast staying true to what I said last night when I started hearing the sounds of neighbors in the great chilly outdoors with machines. I soon joined them, getting started at about 8am. I have the appropriate machinery for this type of weather event and was done by about 9.

Here is out the front window before I started. Note that the neighbors across the street have snow almost up to the doorknob of their front door.Here is what our back deck looked like (and still does):Here is the star of the show: 6 horsepower, 24 inch cut, two stage, self propelled, electric start, by Craftsman, the tools people:The only hard part is that squeezing the levers to activate the auger and the drive press my mittens firmly against my hands. Without any insulating pocket of air my thumbs get cold very quickly. Today I took a short hand warming break about halfway through the project.

The driveway before I started:One of my motivators was I could see one of our two Sunday newspapers down there in a footprint at the end of the driveway.

And after the first pass.The usual wide stuff at the foot of the driveway had instead been shoved over towards our front lawn so it was not as wide as usual. This meant that the snow was piled in front of the mailbox about six feet out into the street. Even with this distribution the the deepest section was well above the top of the snowblower.Almost done, I had to stop and gas up. In the stocking up frenzy that gripped this metro area on Friday gasoline was the only commodity I acquired. Good idea.We went to the hockey game. Along the way we got a good view of side streets off the snow emergency route in Minneapolis. It wasn't pretty.