Sunday, March 22, 2015

Hello, Spring!

The first day of spring 2015 arrived on PEI in the midst of a week of snowstorms. There was one on Sunday-Monday which brought lots of snow. Then there was another on Wednesday that brought less snow, but blew it around so nobody could see and confused the efforts that were still underway to clear the roads from the earlier storm. And now another today. Again, not as much snow, but ANY snow on top of this feels like too much.

I don't think I've ever felt so overwhelmed by snow. Seven-foot drifts are right outside my front door. 

My husband built a lovely snow bunker on top of one of them last Monday night.


Last Wednesday evening, Stephen was on his way home from work and got stuck on the road. There was one lane cleared after Monday's storm. I believe the method is to drive through as fast as you can to get through the drifts and hope you don't meet anyone. Visibility was poor, and it turned out that the one lane had gotten a bit too narrow to fit a car through. So he was stuck. He walked to a neighbour and borrowed a shovel. He got the car free, then shoveled the length of four telephone poles down the road to get the car into the nearest driveway. This takes a sentence or two to tell, but it involved about two and a half hours of shoveling. It also involved a friendly neighbour heading out in his truck from just around the corner and getting stuck as well. And in the end, the drifts on the road were too much to even walk through to a friend's house a kilometer away. Stephen had to stay the night at the home where he parked his car, where he slept (not much!) on a couch that was too short for him. 

Right now, the Confederation Bridge is closed again, and plows have been taken off secondary roads because of poor visibility. Cold wind chill of -25 degrees Celcius tonight. (That's -13 Farenheit.)

Winter, We Surrender!