Scenes from Winter

It's been one heck of a winter in Iowa. After the massive snow storm back in early December, there was another massive snow storm late in December, and then EXTREMELY cold temperatures. The worst part, in my opinion, though, is the huge snow drifts that make it very difficult to see when driving. You have to creep way out practically into the road you're turning on/crossing, just to see if there are any cars coming. It's dangerous and nerve-wracking. Finally last weekend the thermometer snuck above freezing, so some of the snow and ice finally began to melt. But then at night it'd drop below freezing again, and the roads would be slick in the morning. On Saturday the boys and I arrived home from an outing to find Mike taking advantage of the"warm" (about 33 degrees) temperatures by chopping up the ice at the bottom of our driveway. The boys just had to help.

They got all the ice broken up and cleared out, which makes the drive up into our driveway much smoother.

This next picture was taken at Mike's office. There is a good 6 inches of ice pushing the gutter away from the building. At first Mike wasn't able to get ahold of the landlord, who lives in Virginia, but finally she got back to him and sent somebody out to take care of the problem... sort of. Today he said somebody came out and stripped off most of the gutters, but the gutter right above his door is hanging off now.

One of the perks of all this snowy, cold weather we've been having is that the trees have been flocked in snow many days, and it's just beautiful. I really love seeing the trees like that, and I don't remember another winter where they looked that way so much. It's like they're right out of a painting or something. Here is one tree from our front yard on Tuesday.

And a close-up of some branches.

So most of the ice had melted, and then, at about 3 a.m. yesterday, the freezing rain started. Today was yet another day where all the schools canceled, making it 5 snow days so far this year. Here is what our swing set in the backyard looked like this afternoon.

And a close-up of the icicles.

This is what our tree branches looked like.

The concern now is that the wind is supposed to pick up, and we are worried about our tree branches breaking. Some power lines have already gone down, but thankfully ours are underground, so we should be good, I think. We have had trouble getting into our garage, because the garage door is so heavy with ice that it can't go up on it's own. I don't know if the freezing rain is supposed to continue tonight or not, but I'm hoping not. The main roads are not so terrible; it's the parking lots and driveways that are really bad.

Hopefully the temperatures will warm up again so we can melt the newest round of ice. Seriously, though, how long until spring?!