We got about 8 inches of snow here in London on Thursday night and Friday - closed all the schools in the area and made getting to work a real pain for many on Friday. Today we're enjoying a gorgeous winter wonderland sort of day with sun and pristine expanses of snow - the sort of day that makes up for the inconvenience of living in a snow belt.
However points east, maritimes, New England etc. may take a LOT longer to shovel out. Anyone here from Boston area?
Jan

The part of our family near Boston has yet to check in this morning. But the son in southern New Hampshire called to say they surprisingly did not lose power, and things were fairly nice today.

Let's hope the locust trees near the street and power lines on DH's road did not take out the power. His home is about 25 miles NW of Boston near 128.

Here in Central Mass we did not lose power even though we had 30 inches of snow and gale force winds. Cape Cod and the South Shore, however, are completely in the dark and it's going to take some days for them to get it back.

Steve

I also hope that you are all safe and successfully dig out.

This post was edited by berndnyz5 on Sun, Feb 10, 13 at 8:04

Over 2 feet of snow. Power off form 9:30 PM to 6:00 AM. Back off at 9:30 AM and just came back on at about 6:15 PM as we were headed into single digits tonight.

I kept warm by heating pots and pans full of water on my gas stove, bringing them to a boil every 2 hours or so and shutting off most rooms. The sound of the boiler humming away is so sweet.

Jon

Wow, that's terrible Jon. It's gets real cold when the power is off for several hours. I hope you have your power consistently on now!

Sounds really miserable and no power makes it worse. We had that happen so we put in a wood heater to make sure this never took place again. Now I love my wood heat better then the gas(except for the mess)Hopefully the worst is almost over but the clean up

I think I would not be able to dig out of 30 inches of snow, my snow blower would not able to handle more than 15 inches, plus then there would be a 5 ft wall at the road left over from the snow plow.

A friend in southern NH sent us a picture of the pathway to her mailbox, it took her 30 minutes to slog through the snow which looked about knee deep or so, how do you know where the pathway is.....tomorrow will be a real blue Monday back to work for most people.

Down here, we have the next 4 days predicted as thunderstorms and winds, a lot of moisture, and that may exit northeast for the Atlantic seaboard....hopefully not icy roads for you guys.

Quite a mess.

Power has stayed on since last night. Dogwood has collapsed and was pulling down on both the power and cable lines. Snow has dropped off the branches and they no longer are laying on the wires. A lot of big branches. It will take a couple of good long days to clean it up and burn it all.

I will get either an emergency generator or a gas insert for my fireplace this summer. Soaking rain coming in tomorrow...what a mess that will be.

Pretty though

Bernd, the trick to getting a snow blower to go through very high snow is to-

First slug through and get one pathway through the snow. Once this initial path is in take swaths only 1/4 the width of the snow blower. This way the auger on the blower can handle the amount of snow going in and will eat right through very deep snow.

When you try to gobble through a whole width (in my case 24 inches) it is too much and you end up trying to plow the snow rather than feeding it into the auger and discharging it. I had over 2 feet and by taking about 6 inch 'cuts' off the edge it ate right through the snow and sent it flying.

The first pass is rough and requires a lot of back and forth to get it through. You also need a 2 stage blower, single stages cannot handle any heavy loads. Electric snow blowers are only good for very, very light snows (useless, in my opinion). I had to rescue my next door neighbors who have an electric blower; trying to be 'green' It could not touch the heavy snow we had and they were having a horrible time trying to shovel out......like a good neighbor, I was there to bail them out with my carbon dioxide breathing, snow eating machine.

Jon

Jon, good for you. I like to hear about neighbours helping neighbours. We have neighbours who will help if needed.

My husband developed plantar faciitis early this week.Then we got about 18" of snow on Friday. He was able to hobble out on Saturday but the tractor wouldn't start. We are both retired, so I told him not to panic that we could dig ourselves out when it stopped snowing. He was able to remove the snow today, so I was able to get out to restock the fridge and pantry.

So, I hope everyone fared as well as we did.

Many years ago my then neighbor's wife would be out shoveling out the drive so when her husband got home he could drive right in. She had a bad back so I would go out and help her out. My neighbor eventually bought a snow blower and every time there was heavy snow he would then come over and clear out my driveway.

What goes around comes around. It pays to be nice, even if it just makes you feel good.

Jon, I have a 9 HP Craftsman 2stage snowthrower. We had only 7 inches snow, so no problem. I did the snowbank the plow had left in the driveway at the road as you describe, slicing 1/3 to 1/2 off. Though the wet snow on the road the blower did not take. But 30 inch high would take hours with many breaks inbetween. We did not lose any power in upstate NY. Best luck to you! Bernd

We were lucky here (Woodstock, Ontario) compared to the east coast,we got a couple of feet of snow, no power outages. Here's my old swing (too rickety to sit on so I planted it up with Impatiens) in June 2012 and today Feb 10 2013.

We haven't had any long power outages for many years since they put up heavy duty cable reinforced lines around the area. The snow would not have been bad, but the winds were really hurricane force and brought down a lot of trees onto lines. About 75% of the city had at least a short outage.

The municipal light plant in town did a great job and I saw some Western Mass line crews out on the road in the area that they must have brought in. They did a very good job under some very difficult circumstances. Hats off to them.

Jon

A thread like this one really looks beautiful with the new format of GardenWeb. How long has this been in effect? I thought I was on here last night, and did not see the beauteous decorative framing for our photos and postings. Very colorful. Very much appreciated.

God bless you all, so good to hear that you are digging out!