Weather Update

The big news for us these days, around here, is the weather, specifically the numbing cold and the storms. Currently we are clamped in the grip of the gorgeous but deep snow cover from the fall of two days ago. In that grip none of our three vehicles can move, and I am looking at most likely again having to clear our long, uphill driveway with shovel and hoe, unless some good neighborhood soul comes along in a tractor with a blade attached to its front..

Yesterday the airport at Lynchburg, about 30 miles south of here, read 2 degrees below zero F. You can get some idea of how cold it's been around here when I tell you that that broke the airport's old record of 5 above for January 31. That's a drop of seven whole degrees! Almost always the temp records are broken only in increments of 1 or 2 degrees.

I read an even 0 degrees below F here, but to my great surprise and gratification, the water in my workshop was still running. After I finally put some insulation, last year, around the pipe running up out of the ground under the workshop, I had thought my system's freeze-up point was about 7 degrees.

But alas, this morning when the temperature only got down to 8 or 9 above, the water in the workshop had stopped running. I had forgotten to leave it at a slow drip overnight, though the night before, in the zero degrees, I hadn't left it dripping then either. I am trying to figure that one out. Must be a cumulative effect of consecutive low temps.

Today the temp hopefully will rise even higher into the 40's than it did yesterday, and then maybe I'll be able to open a good deal of our driveway to our vehicles.. That's the only thing that bothers me about all this weather, though my wife claims that she has nowhere to go for several more days at least, and I seldom drive anywhere at all. But l very much like having the option. Where is a man, without his options?

Another interesting aspect of all this is the snow sliding off the slick metal roofs on several of our buildings. It's not a problem on my house, because the roofs there all have the very low pitch of 3, which I made that way so that I could safely walk on them. But the ones on the garden shed and especially on the workshop all have the steep pitches of regular gable roofs, and deep snow accumulations like this have a way of suddenly breaking loose as things warm up and sliding off the slickly painted metal in big clumps, and I wonder how much damage it could do to my head, shoulders, or neck, should I happen to be under it at just the wrong time.

Oh, well. That kind of thing is just one of the numerous hazards that go with country living, to compensate for the lack of people, who in suburbs and cities always present other kinds of dangers that are much more uncomfortable to contemplate..