Freeze Farm

The early-morning skies last Sunday were quite ominous.  It was a very unseasonal +7C that morning.  Dark skies like this aren't exactly common during winter-time.  I watched the weather roll in, and within minutes, the first of many snow squalls hit:

Snow squalls are interesting if you're inside warm by the fire with many furry friends at your feet.  If you're on the road and one of these babies hits, you'll gain new appreciation for road delineators, and if you can't see those, there are always hydro poles to guide you, preferably before they make contact with your front bumper.

You can't even make our barn out in the above photo, but it's there where it always is when I look out of my wide screen TV, a.k.a. the kitchen window.  When I was joking about the Transport Quebec mouthpiece talking about vizzie-billie-tee zee-roh in my earlier post, this is what he means.  Zero visibility.  The tractor might be 50 feet away from where I took my photo, and it's barely visible.

We had a great sunset Sunday evening when the skies cleared up:

Snow squalls are generally harbingers of colder weather.  But just how cold, well, let's just qualify it as c-o-l-d:

Conditions of -27C on Wednesday.  This morning the mercury read -24C.  Well, my zest for life just flew out the window with a forecast like that.  That pretty much sums things up these days.

I went to get our weekly flyers out of the mailbox when I got home this afternoon.  Eric was out in the woodshed splitting wood, and Cooper was shivering outside on alternating legs, (he spends a total of 60 seconds outside these days), so I figured I might as well make the trek to the mailbox and bring the flyers in.  The proverbial wimp in me wanted to rush into the house and cast my layers aside, and hug the wood stove like my life depended on it.  However, the true Canadian in me, said, "go ahead, get the flyers in the house, it won't kill ya".

With a windchill hovering around -30C, it's not just cold, it's freezing cold.  I wish I could adequately impress upon you how cold that feels, and unless you've experienced it, you can't possibly comprehend.  You know the dreaded brain-freeze you get from eating ice cream?  Well, you get the same thing during these temps, but you get it from simply inhaling.  That's how cold it is.  I could have thrown myself in a snow bank and let a swift death overcome me, and trust me, at these temps, it's just a matter of time before exposure does a person in.

It's not all aches and pains, though.  My new-used car?  It came with a remote starter.  Wheeeee! is the sound I make these mornings, watching my car start from the comfort of our warm house.  Actually, wheeee (minus the exclamation point) is also the sound the car makes when it starts on days this cold.  Hearing a car start in weather like this is painful.  Even the LCD display on the dash takes a while to come to life.

Another upside?  The sunsets:

Absolutely fabulous.  The peaks of snow in the forefront are man-made.  The city comes by with their big snow plow and blows the snow into the field across the street.  Given the windy conditions, our road would become narrower and narrower with each passing hour.  It basically buys the snow-plow operator a bit of time between his rounds.

Monday's forecast shows a high of -7C, which, while not T-shirt weather, will feel positively balmy when this cold spell finally breaks.

In the interim, I'll have to keep myself occupied by throwing yet another log onto the fire, picking up my knitting, and brewing another cuppa tea.  Survival of the fittest, Shim Farm-style.

In Like a Lion

This is what greeted me when I pulled open the curtains this morning:

Snow.  Lots of it.

There's just something rude 'n crude about snow stuck to the window.  But there you have it.  Welcome to Montreal in March.  Now you know why I leave the Christmas lights up until now...it's a sanity-saving technique for days like this.

The good news is that neither of us had to work today, so we got to hunker down and keep the home fires burning (or the home fries burning, as I like to jest).

We've had an easy winter so far.  Our accumulation started right before Christmas, so we can really say we've had 9 or 10 weeks of snow so far this winter.  That's a joke by normal standards, and I consider it lucky that we've gotten off so easily.  But that's where March comes in.  It's a wet month, and with temps hovering below freezing, snow is inevitable.  We sometimes get more snow in March than the other months combined.  We've started off March well, having received about 8" or 20 cm today.

Eric left the tractor outside, so if need be, we can dig our way out with the front loader.  As it was, our snow removal contractor came by early in the morning and again in the evening.  This storm was different, though.  All the snow came from the east which is a change of pace for us.  Normally it comes from the west, and we get lots of blowing snow.  Not today.  That means that the end of our driveway was virtually clean, and when the snow plow passed, the snow blew over the field across the street, and not onto our property.  I can't tell you how many times I've come home from work and haven't been able to make it down the driveway.  It's just so disheartening when that happens.

Just for the heck of it, I've zoomed in the following street sign, right from the kitchen window while wearing a bathrobe, during a white-out to boot.  Doesn't get more pathologically lazy and Canadian than that, eh?

Can you make it out?  The top one sports a road on the left side of the sign, with a snowmobile crossing it.  That's to warn us motorists that a speeding skidoo might become a hood ornament if neither of us are paying attention.  And by the looks of the fatalities this year, the Ministry of Transport might want to put a bit more funding into their education program.  Maybe part of the problem is the fact that all bars and pubs are well indicated on the Quebec trail network, which is only 33,000 km long.  That's 22,500 miles of trail, with seemingly every damn establishment with a liquor license clearly marked.  Maybe I'm the only one to see the irony in that, or maybe it's a subversive way of adding a bit of bleach to the gene pool.  The bottom sign shows both a car and skidoo.  That means that both vehicles are supposed to share the road, since the skidoo trail and road are one and the same on this section of the street.

Anyhow, it's just a little curiosity and glimpse into the land of the skidoo.  Apropos for a snowy day.

So there you have it.

Despite March having come in like a roaring lion, we hope the adage proves true, and that it will go out like a docile little frolicking lamb.  I'd like to take the Christmas lights down before Easter.

Industrial Snowblowing

A comment on one of my previous posts about snow removal in this area got me thinking about Quebec, and Canada, and misconceptions that others might have about our geography and way of life.

I remember visiting Germany and attending school with one of my girlfriends for the day.  It might have been 5th or 6th grade, and when geography class rolled around, I was grilled on the Canadian way of life.  I remember other kids asking me if I had to go to school on a skidoo (no!) and if there were polar bears in my neighbourhood (no!). There are many myths about Canada and the scope of our vast country, and I have always marveled at relatives who came to visit from Europe, asking if we could drive from Montreal to Niagara Falls for the day (no!), and if they could go bear-hunting in our backyard (I think you know the answer to that one already!)

Obviously, many myths are perpetuated about our winters, about how prohibitively cold and snowy they are.  I think New York City has had more snow than Montreal this winter, and even though that could change by say, March, or even next week, we're getting off easy so far this year.  Snowmobile season barely started when we had a big thaw, and the field you see in the distance is not even completely covered by snow.  Nonetheless, snow plows come by regularly to keep the blowing snow in check.

Our wake-up call this morning was provided by the snow-blower above.  Even if there is no snow fall, we get a lot of snow drifting when then wind conditions are right.  The snow-blower pushes the snow about 20 feet in our neighbour's field (when I say neighbour, I mean the farmer who lives at the other end of the field, about one kilometre away.  This is Quebec, after all, where the long lot land system was in full-force, but that's another story for another day).  The idea is that the snow barrier will provide a wind-break, and allow the snow drifts to form somewhere other than the road.  I can only remember one year that the snow was so high at the side of the road, that driving down our street became like driving into a snow tunnel.

Truth be told, we have a harder time driving down our own driveway than we do driving on local roads for the most part.  We have a snow-removal contractor (rodeo cowboy in summer, snow-removal contractor by winter) whose cell number is written on the blackboard in the kitchen.  We get great service from him, and there's always something extremely satisfying about watching him blow the snow from our driveway, while we're warm inside, hands wrapped around a steaming cup of tea.  Sadistic, I know, but there you have it.  Calling work and declaring you'll be late because you're waiting for the snow removal tractor to come is a valid excuse.  I should know, I use it all the time...

Joking aside, I can remember only a handful of occasions where I didn't make it to work because of the snow.  Once, I was stuck in traffic, literally plowing through snow drifts that were as high as my bumper.  I had a snow plow stuck beside me, and we were all at a stand-still.  I watched as the snow-plow driver stood on the step of his truck, and cleared the snow off his windshield wipers because they weren't keeping up.  I got off at the next exit, and drove home.  Now, I don't consider myself a quitter, but that experience taught me to quit while I'm ahead.  I don't work in essential services, so I simply turn the alarm off and pull the covers over my head and sleep in during a big snow storm.

Likewise, I work for a civilized company that values the safety of its employees.  If we gauge a snowfall as serious enough, we close the office and everyone goes home.  These days, with weather radar, it's pretty easy to tell what's going to be a major snowfall, and what's going to amount to a few flurries, although Environment Canada's been caught with their pants down a few times already this season.  We had "2 to 4" centimetres forecast in early December that turned into 40 centimetres by the time the storm ended two days later, and this proverbial "2 to 4" has become a running gag with us this season.  It can be a virtual white-out outside, and when someone asks how much snow is in the forecast, the invariable answer is..."2 to 4".

The weather is almost always on our mind.  Most Canadians I know will first ask how you are, and then launch into a commentary about the weather.  It's as much a part of us, like the polar bears, skidoos, and Tim Horton's, eh?