Jonas Update

Well, when all was said and done, we here in Chester County were measuring more in feet than inches.  While the official measurement in Philadelphia was 22.4 inches, out here in Highland Township was closer to 36 inches... Or three feet... Or, to those of us who sew, a tard.

I went to bed Friday night with snow coming down but not enough to even think about plowing.  I slept really well as we were only expecting 18 to 24 inches over the entire course of the storm.  I got up at 8:30 AM and the snow, along with the wind had snow almost up to the top of the plow.  At the same time, I got a text message from my weather guys letting me know that a coastal low had joined the storm and that the worst was yet to come.  So I dressed and headed out to plow.

It took a couple of tries to push through the snow, getting stuck once or twice.  Had I waited any longer, I might not have gotten it done.  The initial plowing took about two hours which included shoveling to the truck and cleaning off the windshield..

4:00 PM saw me going out again.  Wind is howeling and snow blowing making it hard to see.  Lots of snow to plow and it was much colder.  I was hurrying to get done...I did not like the blowing snow.  But when you hurry, you make mistakes and I managed to push down my mailbox.  Rudy had warned me about that.  But haste makes waste.  I was upset and really felt frustrated, alone and abandoned.  These are normal feelings from widows after a nice, long marriage.  But the mood happens and I even had dreams that I attribute to the snow and killing the mailbox.

This morning the snow had finally stopped, the sun was out and the skies were blue.  Still a good amount of snow to plow.  So I finally went out and began the big plow for the day.  The snow had blown from the field across the street. I figured after killing the mailbox from the day before, I would have no issues, but I was wrong.  The snow was relatively light, so on one run, I buried the plow blade into a pile, trapping it and creating a snow bank behind the plow.  The truck was NOT moving.  So down to the house for the shovel and I had to shovel the plow out until the truck could pull it out of the bank.

Into the house for lunch.  I called one of my go-to church people to see if I could get help getting the van free.  What I found was that there were many people who were still snowed in because of equipment failures.