Storm of the Century

Most of you have probably heard it was snowing pretty good in Iowa lately. One of the local newscasts went so far as to call Tuesday and Wednesday's storm "The Storm of the Century." I think they were being a little dramatic but even the National Weather Service called it an "epic" storm. We stocked up on all the essentials last weekend and were ready for it but still, wow. Most of the snow fell early Tuesday morning through Wednesday morning and then it was really windy, enough to cause blizzard conditions, for most of Wednesday. It was a lot of snow for Iowa- between 14-17 inches here where we are. Usually we get about 2-3 inches with a storm and a big storm may bring 6-8 inches so this was quite a lot. Pretty much everything (roads, schools, businesses) was shut down yesterday and a lot of the schools still are closed today. Rob didn't have go to work yesterday but he was back today. I didn't take any pictures during the storm because you aren't going to get me going outside to take pictures during a blizzard. Also, much of the snow fell Tuesday night so I was asleep for a lot of the crazy stuff. Here are some pictures from when it settled down yesterday afternoon and what we are left with.

Here is the front of the house from across the street.



The walk to our front door is somewhere around here. It used to look like this.



Aha! There it is.



This is what we saw when Rob opened our garage door.



Our backyard- did someone steal my planter box? Oh, it's just buried in all that snow!



I don't think we will be dining outdoors for a while.



Finally, here is Rob with our neighbors' snowblower cleaning out our driveway. Our shovel works okay for the amount of snow we usually get but it was time to get the heavy machinery out. I ask Rob every year when the snowblowers go on sale after winter or during the summer when we see them at yardsales if he would like to get a snowblower and he always says no. Guess what he said after using this? He came in and told me, "I gotta get one of those! It was so much easier and even kind of fun." Looks like I'll be checking out the snowblower sales in a few months.