Path, 2 degree day

Wow, that's seriously cold! Time to wrap up warm:-)

Yes, especially cold since the sun was shining! I am warm, so long as I stay inside. Thanks, Gudrun!

Digging snow is a lovely therapeutic activity,

Well, then, get on over here and do it, Mr. Smartypants. Thanks, Steve!

Very neat -- ploughed, blown, or shovelled?

After further inspection, I'm guessing shovelled, with the snow tossed a fair distance from the driveway. Shovelling by someone with good arms, then. My snow banks would begin 1" from the driveway.

This part is blown. The parking lot was plowed two days after the storm :-( and I shovelled the walkway to my door. This is pretty much a plow-challenged state, and a nearly non-plow county. Major intersections and curves have little-to-no gravel spread. The explanation is, "lack of funds." I don't doubt that, because Oregonians vote down all new taxes or tax increases. Cross the border to California, no matter where along its length - I swear - the highway is plowed and de-iced. It's the same boondocks, the same climate, but somehow, California snow gets cleared. Cars drop down at the border, so you have to be careful. When I first moved here and asked about the lack of snow-clearing, people just gave me a blank look.

I shoulda known it wasn't ploughed, because of the absence of mountains of rough snow. As temperature increased for the last 20 years of the last century Toronto kept reducing its snow-clearing budget. Then in 1999 there was a massive snowfall that the city couldn't clear -- to the great amusement of the rest of the country the federal govt. sent in the army to help clear. At least Toronto got the message, though. They put money back into snow-clearing. I was impressed by how quickly a big ice storm in 2013 was cleaned up (one of the things they did was restore their melters, which the Toronto roads department invented but then let rust).

There are mountains of cleared snow, but they're in big, commercial parking lots. Today, though, I noticed a big pile developing at the end of mine and it will grow - more snow on the way. Also, there are berms running down the middle of plowed streets (IF they've been plowed). This is a yearly problem for people, like me, who have normal cars, rather than big trucks. This winter is looking to be a big one all over our continent. At some point, I hope that the county/city plows will stop driving around with their blades up, but I won't hold my breath.

The fact that the weather pendulum swings wildly because of global warming is something US science-deniers use as amunition. I've noticed the process has gradually been renamed "climate change" here, because the term global warming is taken to mean the entire globe will be uniformly warmer year 'round.

Poor Diane .... our small town even brines the roads and we have lots of snowplows.
That is more snow than we got .. I feel lucky 1

Ohhhh, no, none of that here! Right over the Calif. border it's a different world, as I said above. Same highway, but a difference in elevation of about 8-12" at the line. The CalTrans crew scrapes a small "ramp" so you can get up to Oregon without blowing your tires.

Salt and gravel aren't expensive, but you'd see very little of it around here. The main roads and highways are polished with a Zamboni machine rather than plowed. Then the road crew yells, "All skate!"

;-b ;-b ;-o

Diane, I've always wanted to ride on the back of a Zamboni (my husband and I call them 'zucchini machines' .. who knows where we came up with that ?) Probably in Florida when the Tampa Bay Lightning used our local rink for pre-season Hockey fun !