Snowy Weather

We were just getting used to winter without snow, and then we woke up this morning! Joey was barking at something outside so we all got up to look and sure enough, three deer were picking their way through the deep snow up towards the well. Whoa, wait, what? Deep snow? Yep! There was more than a foot of fresh snow on the ground! And, it was still snowing....hard! Amazingly, both Carol and I didn't have to go to our respective jobs today. We had planned to drive to Vancouver - a business day trip for our printing company - but had postponed the trip yesterday because the forecast was for snow on the mountain passes. We didn't expect that snow to arrive at our house, or in town, but it did! It hit us with a vengeance.
I was looking for a chance to try out the new plow on the Bobcat utv but I wasn't even sure if it would be able to push this much snow. I guess we were going to find out...
First thing was to install the new tire chains on the back wheels. It took me a while to figure them out, but they went on and fit well. Now, would we be able to drive through all this snow to get up the hill beside the house to the spot beside the propane tank where I put the plow assembly. Yes! It worked great and climbed the hill no problem. The Bobcat feels unstobbable with these chains on! Getting the mount to line up took some messing around, but the pins finally slipped into place and voila, we had a miniature, mountain highway plow truck.
From the first pass, I knew we had done the right thing. It was easy to use and - small miracle - it was easily able to push through the deep snow. After making a few runs cleaning up the knee deep driveway beside the house, I took off down the driveway.
Our plow blade is 18" high and then we have a 6" rubber strip attached to the top edge of the blade. That gives us almost 2 feet of material pushing through the snow. Even with all that, the snow was still coming over the top at times. For the most part though, it was working perfectly, pushing a wave of snow off to one side of the Bobcat. I remembered my lessons and made the plowed swath as wide as absolutely  possible - even falling into the dreaded ditch that has trapped our little tractor in the past. Another miracle though, as the Bobcat with the plow just drove along with one wheel 2 feet lower than the other, buried in the ditch, until a less steep part of the ditch alowed us to simply drive back onto the driveway. It was poetry in motion. Well, okay, maybe it wasn't, but it was a whole lot better than having to drag a frozen tractor out of a snowy ditch with our pickup.
To put the cherry on the top of the snowy weather, the folks at Environment Canada are predicting temps in the mid-minus twenties this weekend!