Winter Storm Stella

Stella is our first blizzard. We've had some pretty heavy snows but apparently, when the snow is accompanied by high winds, it gets classified as a blizzard (the National Weather Service defines a blizzard as a storm which contains large amounts of snow OR blowing snow, with winds in excess of 35 mph and visibilities of less than 1/4 mile for at least 3 hours).

As we've been following the forecasts this past week, the forecast has grown more severe daily. It started out as 2-4 inches and has now grown to 18-24 inches. An Arctic storm has been moving East across the Great Lakes while another storm front has been moving up the East Coast. The uncertainty had to do with where the two storms would meet. Looks like we live there.

We went for our usual morning walk this morning and were just fine with the heavy snow until we turned into the wind. That was painful.

On our morning walk. Things were just getting started.

Normally with this much snow, we'd go out a couple of times to stay ahead on the snow blowing. This storm is so intense that we're just going to let it blow itself out and then we'll deal with it. It honestly seems like the winds might be keeping the accumulation on the driveway to a minimum (blowing the driveway would probably just create a void that the wind would seek to fill).

Right now, it's snowing 2-4 inches per hour. Combine that with the snow that's being picked up and redistributed by the wind and the visibility is pretty much zero. As we look out the window, we can  see nothing at ground level. As we look up, the violently swaying trees finally come into view.

We've been working upstairs on the floor (The closet is halfway done and that will finish the job). As we look out the upstairs windows, we can see the bird feeders. It's interesting that, in this awful weather, bird feeder business is brisk. The cardinals are hanging on for dear life as the feeders swing like crazy.

Some of the local towns have declared states of emergency to keep drivers off the roads. We haven't heard that that's happened in Oakham but then the only driver that we've seen was driving the snow plow (and we've only seem him once).

Kristen has taken a few pictures that I'll add here:

Through our front storm door. There's a road out there.

Through our farmers porch storm door. Snow's really piling up.

Another through the farmers porch storm door. I think that the idea here was to get a picture of the bird feeder. I can see it but I know where to look (I definitely don't see any clinging birds.

I'll add some more pictures tomorrow when it's reasonable to go outside.

-JC-