At least it wasn't a tornado!

February is considered by most Mainers as Snow Month. And this week isn’t letting us down. We’re getting our share as we awoke this morning to the second storm this week. And the week isn’t over yet.

Neither of the storms we’ve had was unexpected. The weather forecasters had predicted both, although I don’t think either one was quite as strong as they had thought. The one we had earlier this week was extremely heavy stuff as the day warmed up changing the storm to rain, as forecast. That made lifting it very difficult and we old folk had to watch what we were doing carefully.

Today’s storm isn’t quite so bad and my snow machine handled it with some ease. My wife has cleared the front and back porches and is working on the deck. She has an electric snow thrower to help her. Guided expertly by her, the machine does a very good job on the deck.

I use a tractor with just about the worst snow blower ever invented. I think I mentioned a few days ago how much I wish I had my old machine with a single stage snow thrower. It cleared anything and everything, including puddles, in its way. This two stage blower loves light, fluffy snow, but put any dampness into it and it’s back to shovels.

Fortunately for me, most of this storm was light, fluffy stuff and so that machine reluctantly blew most of it away. It still doesn’t scrape the driveway very well, though, and chunks of wet, frozen snow/ice remains. It would take some sunshine to melt it for me to reclaim my black driveway. That isn’t going to happen today.

Fortunately for me, my next door neighbor has a truck with a plow. He came through early this morning and cleared out the overnight stuff. Great guy, that neighbor. If I had to clear the deeper, heavier overnight stuff with my machine, I’d probably still be out there from this morning.

Now we’ll patiently wait for the next storm to come in this weekend. The forecasters say it has the potential of being a Nor’easter. I guess we should be grateful, though, a few inches of snow is much easier to handle than those tornadoes that ravaged the South yesterday.

Hmmm. All of sudden my lack of a black driveway has become inconsequential.

G.D.