cold – Mom's Brown Thumb

This winter storm gave us rain, wind, cold, freezing rain, and snow. In my previous post, the weather models did not agree on the amount of snow from this storm. The differences could have been amount of moisture in the air or how cold the air would be ahead of the storm. If the air ahead of the storm stayed warmer longer, then most of the precipitation would have been rain. But if the air ahead of the storm cooled more quickly, then most of the precipitation would have been snow (or combination of freezing rain and snow). Now, how did this storm affect me?

I left the house around 8:30am to run a few errands and hoped I would be home before the storm. I knew it was going to be warm in the morning (relatively speaking for January in the Midwest), but was amazingly surprised that it actually felt muggy. It was still a little foggy, but not as bad as it was earlier in the morning. In some places, visibility was less than one-tenth of a mile. As you can see, most of the fog had lifted by the time I ventured out before the storm. PS – The date on the picture should be 01/12/18.

As I start my car, I noticed the outside temperature gauge read 56 degrees. Then I thought, Wow….it brought back memories of the Blizzard of ’78 (this wasn’t the same weather setup but the weather was mild the day before it hit). Oooohhh, that would be a fun post! Sorry, I digress.

After running a few erands I was walking to my car to go do my last one and boy had things changed! It was about three hours later, so around 11:30am, it was raining, it had become very windy, and the wind was COLD. A significant change from the warm and muggy air I felt earlier that morning. My car was showing the outside temperature was now 41 degrees!! A clear sign the cold front was beginning to move through and the weather was going to change drastically. About an hour later I was finally home and happy to not have to be out driving when the weather was going to be much worse.

Lucky for me it was still raining, and really raining heavy at times, about 2:00pm while I was bringing in firewood. My master plan was to be home before the rain started so I could have the firewood staged already. That way when I got home all I had to do was load up the wood burning stove and start the fire. Best laid plans….you know how it goes.

Just a short hour later or so, I noticed that it looked more like sleet coming down outside. Plus the water on the deck and railing was freezing. Definitely a big change in temperature!

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Now by 5:00pm it had been precipitating a mix of freezing rain and snow. I was thankful that I had a fire going because the power went off!!! I was also fortunate that the power came back on right away…..if not, I would have had heat but no running water (but I’m prepared for that).

It kept snowing throughout the night. The wind was very strong not to mention the wind gusts. I would look out the window and the wind would pick up what looked like sheets of snow and just swirl it all around. By daybreak, the snow had ended and it was so cold outside. The wind had moved snow around so much that I could see grass in parts of the field, yet have snow drifts around the house. I would estimate that I received 3-6 inches of snow, but really don’t know how much snow fell exactly at my house.

So about 7.5 inches in a small drift on the deck. Underneath the eaves had about 3 inches of snow.

This was the snow at the bottom of one of the staircases. I wish this was a better look but I was trying not to disturb the snow while measuring. Plus is was FREEZING outside!!! I walked out to the bird feeder and walked through deep snow near the house and barely any snow under the tree.

Under the tree, you can see all of the bird tracks and wisps of grass peeking through.

I filled the bird feeder to help out our feathered friends. After the storm, cold arctic air settled in and we had wind chills into the single digits and sub-zero temperatures at times.

In the end, the back field had varying depths of snow. At this point is was untouched by nature. Such a beautiful picture and gorgeous blue sky with sunshine.