Oh no, not again!

New Jersey seems to be blessed with weekly snowfalls. First there was the Christmas Blizzard, then a couple more inches last week. It was so little that I didn’t bother shoveling it. Last night we were graced with another foot of snow. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. There was only 6” to 8” in my yard, although some areas did get up to a foot.

Most people were probably glad that the storm happened over night. They were able to get home from work before it started and when they got up this morning, the plows had cleared the snow away.

It was another story for those of us who work non-traditional hours. There was already 4” on the ground when I left at midnight. After cleaning snow off of my car, I crawled home at 25 mph over snow covered roads in the darkness. The concept of “lanes” no longer existed. Traffic lights became the enemy. Red lights had to be carefully timed so that I could either roll to a stop or glide slowly through them praying that the drivers coming the other way would allow me time to clear the intersection. Even green lights were a problem. Once I was stopped, starting up again was a problem as my tires fought for traction in the snow.

My normal 20 minute commute turned into a 45 minute white knuckled odyssey as I negotiated inclines and curves in a vehicle over which I had little control. Even my driveway has a slight incline so rather than being relieved at arriving home, I was unsure if my car would make it up the driveway.

Today I made the happy discovery that it is a lot easier to shovel snow when I have had more than a couple of hours of sleep and there is less than a foot of powder rather than the 2’ to 3’ of snow that I had to deal with two weeks ago. I was all shoveled out in less than 30 minutes.

Which made the birds happy. They were fed early today. I always spread seed on the snow for ground feeders like the mourning doves and juncos.