Blizzard and a Breeze

This isn't an advertisement for Dairy Queen, though in wintry weather when we drove home from skiing at Mt. Hood, we often stopped for one.  Instead, this blizzard stopped for us.  And it brought a mighty breeze with it that blew the snow all over the place.  Guesstimations suggest that we got almost a foot of snow, but it was so hard to tell because of the drifts.  Thomas and I woke up to a snow day on Monday, December 19th.  I wasn't sure what to expect with the blizzard warnings when we went to bed on Sunday because it had been raining...a lovely way to fall asleep, though rare.  School was already on Christmas break, so there weren't any radio warnings of delays.  However, eventually the highway to Springer and I-25 from Santa Fe to Raton were closed because of drifts and poor visibility.  It kept getting worse as the morning wore on, but the snow was utterly deceptive.  A step out the front door was easy because the snow had been blown away to reveal frozen ground.  High-stepping over to the workshop where Thomas was hiding out, on the other hand, was a knee deep trip that dumped snow into my boots.  Tuesday was much of the same.

Our hardest part was getting onto the highway once it was cleared.  The truck, which isn't four wheel drive, got stuck trying to get onto the highway - too much snow and mud underneath.  Tuesday, I wanted to get out of the house, so I donned all my winter gear for a trip to the mailbox and up to the neighbors with some pumpkin bread.  

The car was blown clear of snow and around it, too, but you can see how the wind piled it up.  No scraping or shoveling had been undertaken before this picture.

The view of my relaxing chair in the middle of our circle drive.  Snow in every direction!

Our huge piles of dirt around our future home-site were leveled off in the snow.

Pretty swirls from the wind...

And after the dry summer we had, our rain barrel for the mud room gutter was very happy and full!