There is probably a nap in my future

 Kind of wondering just how the S.O. is going to react after he's up and realizes the time showing on the clock radio is about 90 minutes fast. I got up thinking it was a little after 6, came downstairs, went through my normal first-thing-in-the-morning routine, and then after I was thoroughly awake discovered it was actually 4:45. Realizing I was up almost two hours earlier than normal did not thrill me. The power was out for maybe 7 hours last night, and obviously the clock radio no longer saves the time as accurately as it once did.

The power actually went out multiple times yesterday. It had gone out sometime during the night, came back on before I got up, was on for most of the morning, went  out again, then back for a few hours, and then gone again right about the time I normally crawl into bed to read for awhile. Heavy, wet snow and winds gusting up to 45 mph had the REA linemen working pretty much nonstop. We talked to one of them who said trees were toppling a lot faster than they could keep up with them all. He came through our yard twice checking for limbs touching the line. Never heard a chainsaw running, though, which surprised me. There is a section of power line that has never had a brush cutting crew go through it. It went from being open  field in the 1970s to thick trees, spruce and birch that's now pushing 40 years in age and growing a lot taller than the line, without ever seeing an REA crew, at least not doing routine tree trimming in decent weather. 

I am curious as to how much damage the snow did. I heard trees snapping each time I stepped outside yesterday.  There are a couple trees down close to the driveway -- a decent sized birch for sure and maybe a small black cherry. The yard is littered with pieces of apple trees. The lilacs got flattened, but they should spring back once the weight is off them. The S.O. said he noticed limbs down in the orchard, too, when he walked up to the 5th wheel to retrieve a battery-powered lantern.

How long the slush will sit on the ground is debatable. The temperatures are supposed to climb out of the 30s by the end of the week so some of it will melt. Every time we get snow in October there will be people claiming it's too early or it's not normal. Pshaw. I can recall slogging through snow trick-or-treating in Ishpeming in the 1950s. There was a reason so many parents opted for the basic ghost costume -- it's easy to wear a sheet over a snowsuit. The big question with October snow isn't why is it here but will it stick? Will we see bare ground again this fall or is this snow going to wait until May to melt?

Spring in the U.P.

View from the front door about 8 a.m. yesterday. I measured -- the snow on the railing was a little over 10 inches high. The average new snow depth on the ground was 14 inches. It finally quit snowing around noon. I know what caused it. People across the upper Midwest can curse me. The day before I'd mentioned to the S.O. that it was about time to put my cross country skis and snowshoes back in storage because I wouldn't be using them again this spring.  

The S.O. warning Billy (the grader operator) not to go up to the end of the driveway to turn around where he usually does. We'd had enough warm weather for a serious soft spot to develop and did not want to risk the grader sinking into mud. The snow was so greasy he was having trouble keeping the machine moving as it was. 

There are days when I think I'd love to have this job -- the machine looks like it would be fun to play with. And then I remember that Billy has to get up at an ungodly early hour and get to the county shed before any of the roads are plowed and I go back to just enjoying watching him work. 

I hear a lot of complaints from people about snow plow drivers leaving snowbanks behind their cars. It might be hard to see in this photo, but there is no snowbank. One of the reasons I'm always saying I love the Baraga County Road Commission is the grader operators, both the current one and his predecessor, are really good about never boxing the vehicles in or blocking the path to the house. 

If we're lucky, this will be the last we see of the grader plowing snow on our road until next fall.  

The village continues to grow

Looking toward L'Anse and the Huron Mountains from the Baraga side of the Bay

While the rest of the country freaks out over Winter, local fishermen are rejoicing. I think there are fishing shacks out on Keweenaw Bay that hadn't been on the lake since the 1990s. There's also been a flurry of new construction. This isn't the area where the S.O. and his friend go fishing. They're more adventurous, more nomadic. They use tents and tend to head farther north up the bay past the Sand Point lighthouse.

The power plant putting out the plume of smoke is the J. H. Warden biomass plant. It started off as a coal-fired plant, got converted to gas, was mothballed for awhile, and now burns "biomass," an interesting term for shredded railroad ties and other weirdness. Oh, they also burn fresh wood chips, but for awhile it seemed like it was all old creosote-soaked railroad ties all the time. There's nothing quite like being downwind from a plant burning creosote-soaked wood chips to make a person start wondering just how many lies got told during the permitting process. Every time I catch a whiff of it, I'm glad we live way back up in the hills, just over the horizon, instead of in town.

And what is Winter looking like at our place? About the same as it did the last time I put up a grader photo. This one's from this morning:

Our snow levels haven't changed much. We got about 8 inches of fresh fluff overnight, but the stuff on the ground has been settling so it's still not super deep. I doubt if it's much over 30 inches, although the S.O. swears it's at least 3 feet.

The great blizzard of 2010

Okay, so it hasn't actually happened yet, but you wouldn't know that from the reaction locally.  A few snowflakes were briefly visible this afternoon, and the next thing I knew there was an e-mail from our Division chief turning us all loose from work 59 minutes early.  Guess she wanted to give us a little more time to break through those nonexistent drifts as we mushed our way home.  It is snowing in north Georgia, like up around Blue Ridge, but that's a long way from Atlanta. 

I shouldn't scoff.  I know people who rarely have to deal with snow have a hard time coping with it when the real thing actually hits.  I was lucky enough to take driver's ed in northern Wisconsin in January -- we practiced recovering from skids on a skating rink.  Literally.  We drove the driver's ed car on to the rink, spun donuts, bounced off snowbanks, and had a blast.  We also did slalom runs with the car on back streets in Hurley that hadn't gotten salted or sanded in awhile.  That early experience didn't keep me from parking various vehicles in snowbanks over the years, but at least I don't panic when it happens. 

In any case, I'm going to keep my fingers crossed we actually get enough slush tonight for tomorrow to turn into an administrative leave day.  If the kids around here can get a snow day just based on the promise of snow, it's only fair to let us adults blow off work, too, if some white stuff actually hits the ground.