Blizzard of 2009

Last week Kansas was hit by a blizzard. It's been a few years since we've had one. Long enough, apparently, for people to think that this is unusual weather for here. We may not have had blizzards every year, but most years we had substantial snow cover. I remember a winter in the early 1980s that the snow drifted so deep that I could walk straight out from my back porch across the top of a snow drift. My chow dog sat out at the end of this drift with his back to the north wind, it was frosted. I called to him and he just glanced at me over his shoulder, never moving his body and then ignored me. I had him in the house the day before and he begged to be back outside. It was just too warm in the house for him. Below are pictures I took the first day after the blizzard. You can barely see the logs around my firepit...
...with all the white, it's hard to determine depth.

See the pile of snow across the street? The snow is to the top of our bales to the right. We didn't have near as much snow here as they did in a lot places. I believe Pratt had the most at 28 inches.

Maybe this will give you more of an idea of how much snow we had.

By evening the streets were pretty clear, but we had a drift across our drive plus what they plowed up at the curb.

The street is clear and open all the way down.

The next day I went out and shoveled the sidewalk. This wasn't that easy since there was a layer of ice on the bottom.

Got it nice and clear all the way to the drive.

Then I made it all the way to the end of the drive and as soon as I broke through the snow at the curb my drive filled with water.

At that point I quit. My winter banner was still out.

This is the next day. Most of the water in my drive is gone along with the snow.

All that's left are spots that are in the shade and big piles that are melting down.

Here's my firepit, the snow had nearly buried those logs around it.

For good measure, I put out my spring banner, though it's still cold here. But the snow is gone.

2007 Snow & Ice

The first two pictures below were taken on Monday. As you can see, the ice is not as bad as it was in 2005, the limbs are weighed down a bit, but not all the way to the ground as they were then. Hutchinson has gotten the ice that we had in 2005, their damage looks very familiar.
So far, we have not lost power. Think good thoughts! Tomorrow it's not suppose to be too bad and they're forecasting snow for the weekend. Snow will be a nice change from all this ice.

Today I was finally able to get a good shot of the bird's nest that I had mentioned in a comment. Here's some good that came from the 2005 ice storm. This bird's nest is built on the blunt top of a branch that was broken off in the 2005 storm. I think this might have gotten sawed off flat, making it all that much better. Then little branches grew up around the edges of the "platform" making the perfect place for a nest. You can see nests like these all over town.
The flowers were still in bloom when the ice hit. They hadn't yet given up and now they're flowersicles.
Same with the rose bush... a bushsicle?
All the time I was out looking for things to photograph I could hear, "honk, honk, honk..." The geese have finally decided to fly south (you may need to click on the picture and enlarge it to see them). I saw this and another gaggle in the minute I was out back and had heard at least one if not two others while I was around front.

Snow & Ice

The pictures below weren't taken in Kansas, but not far from it. These are from the flat lands of Colorado, directly across the Kansas western border. They're from the 1948 blizzard. The first is a snowdrift next to the buildings and the second is a young boy standing next to a full size windmill.

On the weather reports tonight I have been hearing the weathermen refer to the ice storm of 2005, so I thought I would post some of my pictures from that storm. This first one I call my Ice Ghost or Ice Spirit. This was how the moisture dripped and froze on my rose bush.

This picture is at my daughter's house. I looks a lot worse than it turned out to be. It just pulled some trim off. They were fortunate, nothing went through the house.
This is looking inside the yard. Their BBQ grill was destroyed as was their swing.
This is looking out my backdoor. I have a maple tree that shades the back of the house and this is what is weighed down with ice and blocking the doorway.
My backyard with the power line going across it.

Here's a National Guard Humvee. They were called out because we lost water pressure and the the generator that the city bought was too small to do the job. I wonder if they've got a better generator on it now? Hmmmm...
These are the maple trees in my front yard. There's a children's picnic table under there. Can you see it? Blue and pink.
Here's a shot of the broken tops of one of the maples in the front yard.
This is what I think is a pretty picture of the ice on the tree limbs. Can't recall ever seeing it like this before. It's like the trees have teeth.