Blizzard

We were already accustomed to keeping our eyes on the weather reports but this year they were checked several times daily. The John Deere 420 had been doing a great job of throwing snow, but there had been so much of it the thrower could barely heave it over the piles and drifts that now lined our driveway and surrounded our house and buildings. We kept two 5 gallon gas cans full and several more 1 gallon cans on hand just in case. By early March we were thinking there could not be too much more snow left to come when the National Weather Service website read “Blizzard”. In all the years I had used the site I could not recall ever seeing a blizzard warning, and if none of these previous storms were blizzard worthy I figured we had something coming at us to really worry about. Stocked up on gas and food, we could do nothing but wait for it to arrive. It hit with a fury of almost 50 mph winds that did not seem to weaken during the entire storm. The snow was a horizontal white blur that blocked the view of anything around us that was more than a few feet from the house. The sound was a constant whistling howl, and the gusts seemed to make the house shudder. Neither one of us slept well as it raged on through the night. The next day was relatively calm, and we began to dig out. Shelly was on the 420 while I worked in front using a shovel to knock the snow down down so that the thrower could reach it. The drifts in our driveway ranged from 1 to 5 feet high. I would dig in with the shovel, step out of the way so she could throw that with the tractor, then repeat. For 9 hours. And that is how we spent our 2019 wedding anniversary.