A week after the Blizzard of 2014 and the snow is nearly gone. When we were shoveling the stuff we thought it would still be here a month later. At least that was the way things were when I was a kid growing up in New England. I guess this is why our nearest neighbor doesn't even own a snow shovel. Why shovel when it will all be gone a few days later?

One of the advantages of living a few miles north of the North Carolina/Virginia border is that when the cold weather leaves, there is plenty of warm to take its place. A few days after the blizzard ended it started to warm up. Over the last few days the temps went up into the high 50's during the day and never dipped below freezing overnight. Add in some rain and the result was almost all snow cover meting away,...other than the piles we created while digging out the driveway or those made by drifting snow during the blizzard or snow falling off the roofs.

The image at the top of this page was taken from in front of the house on the circular driveway (the "D") looking north across our property and down the hill/road. Some piles of snow left by the front loader is all that are left. I was even able to retrieve some sod dug up by the bucket loader and place it back in its proper place all ready to re-root come spring.

The picture below was snapped out in the road looking north back down the dirt road towards civilization. The only snow left is what remains from the piles left by the local farmer who plows our road.

All these images were taken on Feb 21, 2014. Click on any picture to enlarge.

 

Next you can see an image of the turn around cul-de-sac that abuts our property, the end of the line as I like to think of it. A week ago there were snow piles five feet high in several places. Now next to nothing remains.

 

This one below was taken from the road looking back towards the house. What happened to the snow?

 

This is always my favorite shot of the homestead, taken from in front of the Heatmaster 5000 water wood stove boiler towards to south side of the homestead. On clear days the sky up here at 3,000 feet is always such a pretty blue.

 

And this shot is also one of my favorites, taken from just off the front walkway looking south southeast towards the two out buildings with the Heatmaster 5000 in between.

 

At the top of the parent page of this page (On The Mountain > Weather > February 2014 Blizzard) is a picture taken at the height of the blizzard out our back door looking northeast across our long back deck. The snow was piled high and blowing. A week later all you see are blue skies and wet deck. Remarkable.

I can safely say that I've had my fill of winter and, aside from a few more light snowfalls, I'm ready for spring. Lets just see if Mother Nature agrees with my assessment.

Cognitive Dissonance

I guess the saving grace for us is that even if we had stayed put in Northern Virginia, this winter would have been just as brutal. The difference is that out here on the mountain we are miles and miles away from everything and anything.

The locals around here have told me on several occasions that February is the month where, if there was going to be any snow, we would get it then. They just didn't tell me it would be all at once.

To be fair the people around here were just as surprised as we were by the amount of snow we received over a 36 hour period of time. Most reckoning by various individuals puts it somewhere around two feet more or less. And that doesn't take into account the strong winds that created very large drifts and quickly filled in already shoveled walks and driveways.

In essence we experienced two back to back snowstorms separated by about twelve hours of relative calm, relative being the operative word here. The temperature warmed up enough to create some rain and sleet in between storms, resulting in the first 12 inches compressing down a bit to 8 or 9 inches before Part Two started up. This helped knock snow and ice off of the trees and power lines, which went a long way towards preventing power outages in our neck of the woods.

The image below was taken from our circular driveway looking down the private gravel road we live at the end of Storm One

 

This next picture (below) is of a portion of our home and the two out buildings off to the right after the first storm.

 

Our closest neighbors, about an eight of a mile down the road, are an elderly couple and he had just finished a round of radiation treatment. Needless to say he is in poor shape and needed some help. Before the storm started I spent some time down there helping him prepare his generator, put some stuff away and cover his wood pile with a large tarp. After the initial storm had passed Mrs. Cog and I headed back down there to shovel them out.

Here you see the paths we shoveled leading back to his water wood stove boiler to the left and to his generator shed behind the house to the right.

 

Below Mrs. Cog is just finishing our neighbor's front walkway that leads to his car and the water wood stove boiler.

 

We went back a few hours later after dusk and shoveled out their driveway because we saw that a second storm, or radar "blob" as Mrs. Cog described it, was coming. As it turned out we were glad we did because the second storm dropped a true 12-14 inches on top of what was already there. If we had not taken care of the driveway and pathways then it would have been very difficult to deal with twice the snow later on.

The image at the very top of this page was shot at the height of the storm the next day. 25 to 30 mile an hour winds created near white out conditions for the entire storm. Near the end of the second storm I had to get outside and shovel my way out to the water wood stove boiler to load it back up with wood. I found at least a foot of additional snow and two or more foot deep snow drifts.

 

And below Mrs. Cog snapped a shot of the front of the homestead after the second storm while she was working on freeing the cars from captivity.

 

A great shot (below) by Mrs. Cog of the cars buried in snow after the second storm.

 

The day after the second storm dawned bright and blue, a truly glorious day.  Below is an image taken  of the front yard and the private road leading back down the hill. Compare this one with the one further above after the first storm.

 

The next image is of Mrs. Cog and the child unit hacking a path out to the cars.....again. This was getting real old. Overnight winds had buried much of the path cut yesterday.

 

While I was opening back up the walkway to the water wood stove boiler and the garage, Mrs. Cog and the child unit worked the front walkway. The sky was such a brilliant blue that morning. Truly magnificent.

 

We live at the end of a private dirt road off a dirt road off of a back road in the middle of nowhere. Below is an image of the Cul-de-sac just at the end of our property. The three people who live on this private road year round have contracted with a local farmer to plow our private road with his large John Deere farm tractor with a plow attachment.

Twice yesterday during the height of the storm he came chugging up the road clearing the way. Considering what he was dealing with he did a great job making the road passable for four wheel drive vehicles, especially considering the blowing snow all night.

 

After cleaning up our own walkways and making our way out to the cars, but not clearing them completely, we decided to head back down to the neighbors to dig them out again. Here you can see Mrs. Cog on the left and the child unit on the right heading down the semi plowed private dirt road we live on. Snow drifts filled in the road a bit, but it was still passable with a four wheel drive.

 

Halfway to our neighbors I turned around and took a shot of the road leading back to our place. You can see the snow drifts on the right hand side below.

 

I got to work digging out the neighbor's wood that I had covered two days earlier. It was slow going, but the results were so much better than they would have been if the wood had not been covered. Then I widened the pathway from the house to the wood stove boiler so that our elderly neighbor could make his way safely to the stove.

 

Mrs. Cog, with help from the child unit, cleared nearly the entire driveway. Amazing.

 

Nice clean walkway by Mrs. Cog and daughter....with a little help from me.

 

Just as we were breaking through the really heavy packed snow at the end of our neighbor's driveway the Calvary showed up in the form of the third resident of our private road. He comes with a Deere backhoe and bucket loader and he made short work of the heavy snow. We were all pretty tired so it was real nice to step back and let the heavy equipment do its job.

 

The Calvary then offered to help dig us out as well, so we headed back up the road while he worked at clearing some of the snow drifts between him and our place.

Below is another shot of the road back to our place from our elderly neighbors property line.

 

While the backhoe made its way up the road we worked on digging out the backsides of the vehicles, then backing them up 5 feet in order to give the bucket loader room to remove the packed snow in front of the vehicles. The Deere made quick work of removing that heavy snow.

 

With both vehicles now cleared from the circular driveway the Deere could go to work without worrying about hitting anything important.

 

Mrs. Cog took this shot (below) from our front porch of the Deere working the circular driveway. I was very grateful that our neighbor showed up when he did. We were all exhausted and he saved us a half day's work. Thank you neighbor.

 

The final image below shows what a great job he did with his John Deere. Bravo!

Cognitive Dissonance

 

 

I was returning from a trip back to the Northern Virginia area where we previously lived to take care of some business when I ran into some 'weather' a half hour from the homestead. The roads around here are twisty up and down roller coasters and it's not uncommon for the elevation to change by several hundreds of feet within just a quarter mile or so.

As I began to ascend a ridge line I noticed strange ice formations on some of the grass and trees, which grew heavier as I continued to climb. It wasn't your normal ice, as you can see by the photos above and below, but whiter, thicker and fluffier. I quickly concluded that the fog that was rolling in and out must be freezing on some surfaces, causing the spectacular winter wonderland I was witness to.

The freezing fog phenomenon was limited to a pretty narrow band of elevation as well as location. The picture above was taken about 200 yards from where I was getting onto the Blue Ridge Parkway. Yet a mile down the Parkway all traces of the frozen fog were gone. I suspect conditions were just a little bit too warm for the fog to freeze and the ice never appeared.

Below is a shot taken from the Parkway descending into a sheltered valley. In the foreground is a fence that is clearly free of frozen fog, yet looking out to the background you can see the trees and other areas are covered while other areas nearby both higher and lower are frozen fog free. Click on the image to enlarge.

Below I share a close up of some roadside brush and weeds covered in the frozen fog. Note how the deposit of the fog is unpredictable even in area just 10 feet wide. None of the leaves on the surface of the hill itself have any ice, yet grass a few inches above the leaves show a coating of the frozen fog.

The next image below was taken from the warmth of my car on a blind curve. I snapped about a dozen shots, then thought better of my precarious position and drove away. No sooner did I put the car in motion, but someone came round the curve behind me and hit their brakes. I'm certain they were wondering who the fool was parked in the middle of their lane of travel.

In the image below note how thick the ice is on the individual branches of the tree as well as the ice on the fence to the right, yet how little there is on the fence to the left.  Same thing with the ice on the grass to the right and how little to the left.

The next image below is of a man made pond on the side of the road with what I assume is a pump house in the back ground. Again it is interesting to see what has been covered with frozen fog and what has not. This was one of my favorite photos that I took that afternoon.

You can really see the dramatic change in elevation in this image below. There simply is no flat land around here, just more hilly or less hilly. Once again if you study the picture you can see how the fog froze in some places and not others.

Finally the picture below may look familiar. The framing is slightly to the right of the image at the top of this page and zoomed in a bit. It looks like the ice is growing out of the fence posts in the mid ground while the background now includes the house to which the barns in the top picture belong to.  Check out the pine tree in the upper right corner. The back side has no ice indicating the direction the fog was flowing while it was freezing.

We  are expecting a snowstorm over the next few days that is expected to drop a foot or more of snow, our first real snowstorm since moving here. I hope to be able to bring some winter wonderland pictures as soon as I can dig ourselves out. See you soon.

Cognitive Dissonance