I spent most of the last four hours clearing snow from this freakish April blizzard. There’s been about 15 inches of snow so far, and it’s still coming down. This combined with some snow we had earlier in the month got the folks at the NWS excited:
“We’re only halfway through the month, and it’s already the snowiest April on record for the Twin Cities!” the National Weather Service announced on Sunday morning. “We beat April of 1983’s record of 21.8″ by 0.7″ yesterday and it’s still snowing!”
Our city declared a snow emergency last night and plowed the even sides of the streets. Lucky us to live on the even side of the street. The plow came through in the wee hours and left a wall of snow and ice about two and a half feet tall at the end of our driveway. Our stark-raving-mad employers expecting us to show up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Monday morning, I attacked the wall. In addition to the shovels that Minnesotans are issued upon birth, we’ve also got a snow thrower. (For those who don’t live in cold climates, a snow thrower typically clears up to 18" wide and, if gas-powered, has just a few horsepower, a snow blower typically clears 22" or more with 5-8 HP, or bigger for commercial use.)
We’ve got a snow thrower designed by very stupid engineers. Who in their right mind would design one of these machines and come up with the idea of plugging it in to an indoor-outdoor extension cord? What could possibly go wrong? In our defense, we didn’t buy it. My wife got it for free when the previous owner upgraded to a big snow blower.
It took a long time to clear the wall of snow. Alternating between the snow thrower, a full-sized weighted ice chopper, and ye olde shovels, I was just about done when the snow thrower hit a piece of ice bigger than it could handle and emitted a loud keeerunhk. It’s dead, Jim. One of the blades had snapped.
Entirely coincidentally, before heading out to do battle with The Wall, I mentioned to my wife that the corded monstrosity had to go, and suggested buying a battery-powered one before next winter.
But The Wall was removed, cars can get out the driveway, and I’m sitting inside drinking a latté.
And it’s still snowing.
