Day 2.018: Mixed fortunes

As expected, when we woke up this morning, we discovered that the schools were closed, the roads were a mess and we had an inch or two of fresh snow. Since my physical presence was not really required and there was no realistic prospect of the roads getting better, I decided to work from home.

Yesterday I measured the remaining undisturbed snow in the front at four inches deep. Tonight it is about nine inches, but not all those inches are equivalent. Until midday, we had fluffy snow falling but this afternoon we had sleet and freezing rain. When I went to shovel half an inch or so of this messy mixture, I found that it was probably as heavy as the previous four-or-so inches of snow combined. It is still a shock to be out in the rain and then to find out that (for example) the peak of your cap is coated with ice. As you can see above - the effect of this is to reduce the depth of the snow by compressing it - of course if it had fallen as snow, we'd have had double the accumulation I suppose.