What did I say about spring??

At about 2pm yesterday afternoon, the National Weather Service (who had just recently cancelled the winter weather advisory, by the way) issued a blizzard warning for 4pm until 5am this morning. I'm here to tell you, they got this one right. Holy cow!

By 4, the wind had definitely picked up and the snow had begun to fly! I got to drive home in it around 4:30 or so (thanks to locking my keys in my office and having to wait for someone to unlock my door - yay baby brain!!). I was glad to get home and hunker down for the night. Jason, on the other hand, finished the first round of clearing out the driveway shortly before I got home and then went back out at 8 to do it again. He probably cleared almost another foot at 8, and then woke up to even more this morning - maybe another 6-8 inches actually on the driveway. We're not entirely sure what the grand total of snowfall was because it drifted so much, there's no real way of knowing. I can say that we have packed spots in the backyard that are probably about 8 inches deep, and then giant drifts that are literally taller than me (not that 5 feet is really that tall, but still....). I'm going to leave the commentary at that, and just share some pictures from the past couple days. I think I figured out that I could count on one hand the number of times I've ever seen snow like this. Jason said it made him feel like he was back in Oswego. Enjoy the pictures!

Poor Fred waiting to come in last night!



The front of the house. You can kind of tell how high the edges of the driveway are....



Jason started by cutting this drift down before he busted out the snowblower. Then it grew again...


For those that don't know, Jason is a little over 6 feet tall....


And I'm right at 5 feet tall... yes, the drift is taller than me!


Here's the same drift from right next to it. I was standing on (almost) bare ground.



Here's some drifting in the backyard (sorry it's dark...). The fence is made out of 6' boards!



This is the other side of the house... I'm not sure exactly how tall our shed is, but Jason can stand up in it. Again, the fence is 6 feet tall. Those are some serious drifts!!

Truck full o' snow, anyone? This was downtown this afternoon when we ran out to get a new tow strap (Jason destroyed his trying to get the neighbor out of his driveway) and another shovel (also a casualty... and there ARE no shovels). The big berm in the middle of the road is the plowing technique here - they plow to the middle, then use giant grinding snow throwers to put the snow in the trucks. We saw them dumping some truckloads in the harbor - Jason said they were making icebergs!



This is the middle school. It looks like you're just looking up at a mound of snow, but the drift really was higher than the first floor windows. Crazy!


Finally, there was a small avalanche out past the base overnight last night. They got it cleared up, but it was funny to see a giant mound of snow on one side of the road, and then the rest of it on the other side. This is a road side in the middle of the mound... not sure if the snow crumpled it like that, or if the plows did when they were trying to clear up the road. The giant snow balls toward the top of the picture are the top of the mound. It was probably about 10 or 12 feet. Again, CRAZY!

I took a few more pictures, but these were the best at showing how much we really got. I think they said something about it being around two feet officially, but I think it has to have been more. It's snowing again as I type this, and we're expecting a rain/snow mix tomorrow. There's even a flooding warning in effect since all the drains are covered by snow and they're saying it could be another inch to 1.5 inches of rain on top of all the snow.

And, as if we haven't had enough in Alaska this week, Mt. Redoubt, up on the mainland, also finally erupted this week. So far, we haven't had any effects in Kodiak (any flight cancellations were due to the snow, not the volcano), but we could be dealing with it for up to the next five months!

Just for the record, it is definitely the 5th day of spring. But I'm starting to agree with one of my friends who said that spring is just a word in Alaska, not necessarily a season! Looking forward to our trip to Connecticut to maybe get a small taste of a real spring!