Less Than A Foot Of Snow Overnight, Westward Ho

7:23

Up at 5:45, to the honks of Canadian geese, sounds I heard on and off during the night.  At the moment, they have moved elsewhere, to wake others along the lake.  We did not get as much snow last night as predicted, up to 18 inches, more like 10-12 or so it looks from my back porch.  The road has been already plowed by Shane, comforting to know he is on top of things along Woodlawn.

Yesterday was a day of waiting, a lost day more or less because we tried to make sense of the weather warnings, whether we should drive to Cleveland or not.  We could not leave until the afternoon because Evie had a dentist appointment late morning and did not get home till around 1:00.  After much angst and realization that whatever we chose the opposite would happen, we decided to put off our trip West until today.  And, of course, as we predicted, it was sunny most of the afternoon here at the lake, though it did cloud up and start snowing hard around 7:00.  We could have driven to Cleveland without a problem, or so it seemed, if we had left early enough but Interstate 90 as well as Interstate 86 can be treacherous.  Let's just hope that the Interstates are cleared by the time we leave today, around 2:00, when the snow is supposed to stop, the lake effect warnings expire.  For the first time, I can see the advantages of spending the winter in Florida, not that I want to but!

So yesterday was a day of anxiousness until we decided to stay, then we both collapsed and did little the rest of the day.  We were all packed, the house was organized, and we had nothing we had to do. So we did nothing but lie around, watching TV, reading, regretting at times the fact that we had not driven to Cleveland for the night.  Around 4:30, just before wine time, I went outside and did some easy shoveling of the parking space and walk, around two inches of blowing snow.  We then relaxed, listened to the radio, kept up on the weather reports for the night and Friday.  Then, around 7:00, as we were having our burritos, the snow began, heavy with blowing winds, the heaviest snow so far this year, at least along Woodlawn.

Heavy Evening Snow

Around 9:00, I turned on our spotlight and went out and shoveled one more time.  About six inches had fallen in less than two hours.  Fortunately, the snow was light and fluffy, so it was easy to move and it was kind of fun to be outside, snow hitting my face, as I cleared our parking space.  It took about twenty minutes at the most and I hardly worked up a sweat.  When I looked out this morning, it looks like we got another four or five inches, so it will be another easy shoveling this morning.

We had dinner as I mentioned around 7:00, watched an early Steven Soderbergh 1993 film called King Of The Hill, about a young boy, forced to grow up on his own during the Depression.  It was decent, the perfect diversion to keep our mind off the weather, our decision to stay the night. We ended the evening watching Stewart and Colbert, then went up to bed around 11:00 to read, then sleep.

This morning we will have to decide whether we should drive to Euclid today, then Chicago for the weekend or just wait until Sunday and drive the southern route to Kansas City.  They are predicting icy roads, freezing rain on the Interstate's on Saturday, the day we would drive to Chicago.  More decisions.

7:28

It's now 7:30 and the sun just burst through the clouds, an orange globe, hanging briefly over the trees of Wells Bay.  To the north, it's all cloudy and gray, in fact, except for the dash of light over Wells Bay, it's all clouds.