Digging Out

So the Blizzard of '13 (let's hope it's the only one) has come and gone. We never lost power, which is a relief. The official snowfall total at Logan Airport is 24.9 inches, ranking it at #5.

We seem to have gotten more than that here in Medford; when I finished clearing our front steps, I got a tape measure and the trough I had dug was 30 inches deep. There's also some drifting in our back yard that probably exceeds four feet in a couple of places.

The snow wasn't as heavy as I expected, but there's so much of it that I had to work on it in small sections. When clearing the snow from around our house, I normally try to remove as much as possible, but dealing with 30 inches of snow, even six linear inches at a time, is a daunting task.

Today I dug a path out to the street so the dog could finally be walked again, then worked in both directions to the adjacent property lines. All that took two hours. It's kind of cool to have a path that's only a shovel wide with these walls of snow on either side. I wanted to keep going, but I was worn out.

I didn't bother digging out the car yet, because we didn't need to go anywhere. Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and somewhat less frigid, so we will work on clearing the driveway then. At some point we will also need to clear a path to the back door, but at the moment it's easier to use just the front door.

Also, our next-door neighbor is ill, and if no one else has cleared the sidewalk in front of their house by tomorrow, we will take care of it for them.