Blizzard Feb 22 - Mid Atlantic/North East

[RazorV66]

Thank God we won't be getting snow like that here in Michigan. 

It is snowing right now but we are supposed to only get a couple inches.

[David64]

I just thought of this, but all that snow is going to be bad for us here. When all that snow up North melts, it means floods all along the Ohio River, from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Southern Indiana, Southern Illinois and the full length of Kentucky. Last year the river got high enough they were going to call for evacuation of a small town near the river. Luckily, I'm about 11 miles away so it won't affect me, but if it breaches the levee, that little town is going under. Southern Illinois had bad flooding last year too. Fields and roads were flooded because the Ohio was so backed up, it couldn't drain.

My Wife and I were on our way to Central Illinois to see our kids and in many places, we drove through water over the road. Just a couple of inches, nothing deep or I wouldn't have even tried it, but you could tell it had been much worse.

[rickymouse]

Our snow came this last week, a week long of plowing every day.  Last Sunday I took the tractor out and blew back the banks.....and got a flat tire.  The chloride was spraying out a hole onto my leg and the fender.  Well, that sucks, I must have hit something in the snowbank on the shoulder of the road and punctured the tire...maybe a piece of glass or something or maybe some nail in a board.  So, it snowed all week, the banks are seven to eight feet high and the relief areas to pile the snow are almost full again.

I have about an seven hundred fifty feet of driveway, a circle drive shaped like a big P.  It takes more time and gas to plow the drive, but my tractor with the six and a half foot blower on the back does not have a cab, so I usually use it to blow back banks on nicer days and use the truck when it is crappy out.

So I contacted a guy I know who owns a cement plant who lives a mile away.  He has his guys plowing and hauling away snow with trucks and loaders and one eight foot skid steer snow blower in the winter.  His crew just got his machine from his house to use on a job last week, but he said he will be getting it back this coming week, he has to do his house, his mothers house, and his sisters house.  They all live around  a pond a mile from my house.  A hundred fifty bucks an hour....he says it will take an hour or two to push things back.  But it has to be done, the tractor is down so I cannot blow the lower banks back, the high parts are over eight feet tall.  Most of the drive has snowbanks higher than the Subaru Forester.  Over two hundred inches already this year and we still have two months of winter left...March is usually a really bad month many years...If I can't get the tractor tire fixed, I will have to have him come again.

If I were to just go out and buy a new tractor with a cab and snowblower, I would really enjoy plowing, but it is forty grand for one that will do a job.  My old tractor cost seven grand used, and I have had it for thirty five years, it has done a lot of work for me and runs pretty good, but I am seventy and I know the kids and grandkids can't use it, it is kind of tricky and none of them likes being full of snow.  My daughter said I should just buy a new one that is four wheel drive and has a cab, she said she would even blow the snow and blowing the snow does not create big banks like plowing.  The tractor is a seventy seven, that is almost fifty years old...and has about three thousand hours on it.  The plow truck is an eighty seven, about forty years old, and has thirty five thousand miles on it.  And the plow truck is full of dents, circular drives with snowbanks tend to push the doors and fenders in when you side swipe them.

And people in New York complain about eight to twelve inches of snow in a three day storm....we ggot two feet in a day twice this year..and eight to ten inches happens quite often, we will have another seven inches tonight they said on the weather station website.  I sure hope the truck does not break down, this is not the time of year to get a good price on a new tractor.  The truck is a stick, and it is a full size pickup, a short vehicle would be better here for plowing.  I don't need a new truck, and a tractor with a front blower and bucket sounds like a better way to get to town around here if I want to go for coffee.  I bet if I fixed the other tractor tire and fixed some little issues, I could still get six grand for it with the blower and the back blade.  But I would have to sink about a grand into both new tires to get that money. and I would need to get one new pressure relief valve for the bucket hydraulics on the loader...that will probably cost me about sixty bucks, but I can change that myself....the bucket twists down slowly and needs to be straightened up about every five minutes, or I can leave it up higher and then go around the car and swing the bucket into the Forester when making the corner.  Hopefully I won't fall and screw up my shoulder and other shoulder blade this year, that sucked, it took all summer last year to finally heal....weird when you can move your shoulder blade around, I cracked the cartilage holding two ribs to the backbone is what I was told...so they were moving in sockets but never came out of the socket on the back bone.  Third time I did that in my life...it sucks....It used to take about two months to heal but now it takes nine.  These were not the same ribs I cracked the cartilage in the back before though, those were lower down and did not directly loosen the shoulder blade...just hurt like hell.  This time I did not go to the doctors, I did the other two times, and they gave me pain pills and said it will heal....and it did.  I could not lift much is what they told me those times, and do not do any exercises for a while.  After the healing was pretty done, I did go to a doctor/ specialist in muscles and tendons and cartilage because of a lingering shoulder problem on the right side, and he checked it all out and said it was pretty healed, and told me which Ribs were effected, and that I pulled a ligament on the right arm, the shoulder blade  was on the left shoulder.  That guy was pretty good, he gave me exercises to fix the right shoulder and it worked pretty well, he said it will never be as strong as before, and that I will always have a little loss of strength in one lifting position because of the damage, but all I have to do is give my arm a little twist and it works well.  I guess surgery will not help with that injury, it had already healed for six months before I went to see him.

So, I should buy a new tractor I suppose with a cab and front snowblower....The forty four grand includes the back PTO extra pump, so I can lift the snowblower higher to cut down banks, although, maybe I do not need to pay the extra eight grand for that.  The driveshaft type should be fine in front.  I am guessing they must have a lockout for the loader arms not to go up higher than the driveshaft will reach so I don't pull apart the driveshaft.

[Maxmars]

My news from hometown is lockdown, travel ban, 70 MPH gusts, whiteout...

While I'm relieved that all I got was a few inches of wet shlumpy snow...

I can feel their stress...

Prayers to all in the way of this one...

[FlyersFan]

Okay .... Storm mostly over.

We were supposed to get 21 inches, 50 MPH winds, power outages.

What we got here was 9 inches, just a breeze, power is still on.

So just a regular winter storm.   Not the snowmeggedon that they predicted.   At least not here.

We have shoveled everything.   

Took the dog for a walk on the plowed road and he did one pee.  

So we are good.   For us, it turned out not to be a big deal.   YAY.

[Wild Bill]

Okay .... Storm mostly over.

We were supposed to get 21 inches, 50 MPH winds, power outages.

What we got here was 9 inches, just a breeze, power is still on.

So just a regular winter storm.   Not the snowmeggedon that they predicted.   At least not here.

We have shoveled everything.   

Took the dog for a walk on the plowed road and he did one pee.  

So we are good.   For us, it turned out not to be a big deal.   YAY.

I was looking at the news on television showing how bad New  York and Philly got it with a snow bomb FF and thinking we normally have that in the UK at this time of year but this year we are a balmy 50 F , So I am of to plant some bulbs in the garden and enjoy this good weather , I miss not having a dog to walk for the first time In my life 

[tellmethesecrets]

I was looking at the news on television showing how bad New  York and Philly got it with a snow bomb FF and thinking we normally have that in the UK at this time of year but this year we are a balmy 50 F , So I am of to plant some bulbs in the garden and enjoy this good weather , I miss not having a dog to walk for the first time In my life 

I was just wondering if we'd be getting this soon - I always remember UK weather following NY weather when I was a kid...around a week or so later.  Maybe that doesn't happen anymore, or maybe it was just coincidences that I remember 

[Wild Bill]

I was just wondering if we'd be getting this soon - I always remember UK weather following NY weather when I was a kid...around a week or so later.  Maybe that doesn't happen anymore, or maybe it was just coincidences that I remember 

I used to notice that as well New York or Moscow weather patterns always came soon after but these days it comes sooner more like 3 days now compared to my youth , I stay hundreds of miles north of these capitals and Glasgow and the weather is significantly harsher , I f I was offered a significant amount of money to move bach a further 50 miles north I would happily refuse it now .

I stayed in the equivalent of Alaska in the UK for years and that was enough for me , I like my comfortable life now and I will fly to warmth this winter