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Saturday, November 18, 2017

january: the snow. ALL the snow


Back in my History Day years, I was allll about primary sources. Primary sources were golden. That meant you had a firsthand account of the historical event you were studying and creating a paper/project/performance about - so a diary entry, or an interview, or any kind of personal account. Much more reliable than secondary sources.

Which is why I'm thrilled to think about someone stumbling upon my blog in a hundred years whilst studying about the snowstorm of January 2017 in Nampa, Idaho when it SNOWED A MILLION INCHES. Literally. I was there:
At one point, we were like, whoops, we probably should have put our table away for the winter... and then we were like, WAIT, that's a fabulous way to tell how much dang snow has accumulated at any given time. 

The snowfall also allowed us to capture this goony moment with Will and Clyde THAT MATCHED A PICTURE FROM BACK IN THE DAY and y'all know how much I love when that happens :).

This was another funny moment that I merrily shared on instagram and facebook: one of us married up in the looks department ;). But seriously, how hot is Chuck out there with the snow shovel? Fun fact: he just stood there and all the snow on the driveway melted away like magic 😍 🔥

Oh, this was another funny moment provided by the snow! Most of the time when you saw someone pushing a vehicle (which was allllll the time) it was because they were stuck. This yahoo neighbor from down the street was showing off on his four wheeler and ran out of gas. Is it bad that I laughed? Because I did.

Aaaaand one more funny moment - whenever I had VERY negative thoughts about the snow, I thought of this passage from one of my favorite books, Enduring Light and how Paul felt about the snow. I could def commiserate (you know, with a fictional character ;) ).

Okay, the crazy snow fall wasn't ALL fun and games. There's a thing called ice dams that happen on your roof and they're no joke. Luckily that hot snow shoveler from a couple pictures ago also turned out to be pretty good at roof clearing too! 

Um, yeah, he was also quite the trench creator. Times like this I'm extra glad Chuck knows stuff about the world and water and flooding - it legit wouldn't have dawned on me at all that since we live at the base of a culdesac, and because there was SO much snow that was allll starting to melt at once some days, we needed to make sure the gutters were clear down to the storm drain (spoiler alert: they weren't). Some awesome neighbors at the top of the culdesac did a great job up there and Chuck and I took care the street as it came down by us and I only had the annoying song from Frozen stuck in my head a few times as I chipped at the ice ;).

This corner by our house is a pretty regular flood zone when it rains heavily - except that last summer the city redid a storm drain area near it (where there was actually an even worse flood zone). Alas, it was still no match for this much snow and slush and ice and it became a lake once more: 


It's also the site of one of the only rescue operations I have a picture of - I think every person in Nampa could regale you with about twenty stories of cars that they helped push/pull/dig out/etc. It was insane. We'd be driving along, see a stuck car, hop out, dig them out, get back in our car, and hope we hadn't just gotten stuck too!


Anyways, here's some of the trench digging we did from that little lake to its storm drain. It was SO exhilarating to dig and break up ice and then watch the water flow and flow and flow down and the lake sloooowly recede. Almost made up for the lack of feeling in one's fingers ;).



Okay, so I get that people in Utah and like Minnesota weren't that impressed with the Treasure Valley and our collective freaking out about alllll the snow. But y'all have to understand, this is loads unusual for us and our streets and neighborhoods weren't laid out and designed for this kind of snowfall. We have a gazillion culdesacs. And we don't have those fancy high, straight curbs. And we park on the street ALLL THE DAYS OF WINTER. And the snow wasn't the main problem - it was the crazy high frozen ruts. Most cars that were stuck were high-centered on them.

Things got a wee bit tense in Nampa as the city scrambled to provide plows and replacement parts and contractors to destroy the aforementioned ruts. I reallllly struggle when people sit at their computers and whine so I countered as often as possible on city facebook posts with a whole lotta sucking up and cheerleading ;). But seriously people - if in 2016 our city leaders said, "Hey guys, what if one of these winters we get the most snow in like over a hundred years? That would be crazy... but we want to raise property taxes and spend tens of thousands of dollars on some shiny plows to store in a city shed somewhere just in case" WE WOULD HAVE ALL LOST OUR MINDS. Instead we just lost our minds when they said, "Yeah, we have like four plows. We'll do our best!!!"

More random shoveling pictures. 

THE PLOWS!!!! So beautiful. We cheered and waved. I had friends who greeted them with food and water offerings. So cool. Aren't those flat, driveable streets SO pretty??

And again, allll the credit to my amazing husband. He was so dedicated (and thus inspired me to be dedicated as well) in making sure our sidewalk and driveway were always clear, as well as the area around our fire hydrant. This helped a ton. He also made sure to smooth out the area between our driveway and the street - sooo many cars were getting stuck just trying to pull in or out of their houses. Stuff like that was not on my radar at all. Good thing we're a team ;).

Okay, we'll switch gears to more fun stuff about the snow: sleddddding! I think we ended up breaking like five of those disc sleds during our sledding adventures, these yellow ones were courtesy of my dad, thanks! We grabbed our favorite Andrew and all had a great time:

One snow day found Chuck and the kids outside making the requisite snowmen... although it may have turned into a snowball fight pretty early on. We ended up with... nine snow days? Ten? And a number of them fell on Chuck's normal days off from work which was a-mazing.

More cute kiddos outside in the snow!

And more random pictures of our front yard, heavily featuring our truck that we love despite its decidedly inconvenient two wheel drive. If you've never driven a two wheel drive stick shift big truck in the snow... we have something in common; I haven't either! Sounds terrible though :).

And that's our comprehensive report about Snowmaggedon/Snowpacalypse/whatever trendy names they came up with that I can't spell and am too lazy to google! Remember, young scholars, you heard it hear first: ONE MILLION INCHES OF SNOW FELL IN NAMPA, IDAHO IN JANUARY 2017. SIGNED, SOMEONE WHO LIVED THROUGH IT.

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