"Blizzard" of 2010

We are currently on Day 5 of the first winter 'event' of 2010. The snow began on Friday evening and continued through Saturday, eventually turning into sleet. We all stayed inside on Saturday - the kids had no interest in playing outside while it was actually snowing, and I didn't argue with that. We got outside on Sunday, played a bit, shoveled the driveway, and then got out of the house for a bit (most of the major roads were clear). The temperatures are still fluctuating a bit - the leftover snow and ice melt during the day and then freeze over at night. Tomorrow makes the third day that schools have been closed, and we are expecting more wintry precipitation on Friday, and perhaps even more next week. If we have to get wintry weather, I'm hoping for more of the big, fluffy flakes like we had in December and less of the typical Southern snow, which contains a fair bit of ice. Read on to see what I mean....

Our cat, Mulligan, sitting on top of the snow/ice.

It took a bit of work for the kids to break through the snow, and the kids were amazed by the big chunks they could pick up this time (we had dry snow in December).

We had really good snow for making snowballs. It probably would have made a good snowman, too, but we didn't make one this time. It was hard to get through the top frozen layer to the sticky snow underneath. The kids really wanted to have a snowball fight. Mister J took advantage of Miss M's smaller, slower hands and conserved some energy by not actually throwing several of his snowballs.

Poor Miss M doesn't have the best aim yet - and Mister J ducked at just the right time - but she sure tried hard to get her big brother!

This snow wasn't so good for making snow angels, but my two sure tried! Mister J did really a good job of breaking through the snow and here's the result!

And here's why Mister J conserved his snowball-throwing energy - a snowball fight with Big J! They had so much fun - lots of laughs and LOTS of snowballs back and forth! You can see that the snow is starting to melt, and that it wasn't really cold when we were outside (Big J didn't even wear a jacket out).

The final snow tally was somewhere around 6-8 inches - including a bottom layer of ice, a middle layer of sticky snow, and a top layer of frozen snow/ice. Here's a big chunk of it - 6 inches thick - but this isn't the full thickness of the snow/ice. There was a portion of the yard that didn't even break when we walked across it - and all four of us walked across the same spot!

I really didn't imagine we would get as much snow as we did - after all, the weather forecasters never get it right two times in a row! So, once we knew the roads were clear, we ventured out for a couple more gallons of milk, some fruit, and some sanity! We let the kids play in the new playhouse that's on display, I looked at books (but didn't buy any), and we generally just enjoyed being out of the house. Check out that parking lot - and that's after it was cleared/scraped. The icy bottom layer just isn't going anywhere fast, and that's why tomorrow will be the third day in a row that school's closed.