23 Dec 2004
Finally...

The snow has finally started: the forecast has been predicting it since last night, and areas just to the south of us really got hammered earlier today.

I just got back in from a quick visit to my father in law next door, and the tracks I made when I left were covered by the time I returned - maybe five or ten minutes. The wind is out of the northeast (a strange and ominous direction for the wind at this location) and the revised forcast says 5" to 8" accumulated snow by morning.

There's no doubt we'll have a white Yuletide here ...

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Snow Day

Well, we actually got about 8" on the ground - I think. It's tough to tell because of the wind, which is blowing parts of the pasture bare and mounding huge (10 foot plus) drifts.

I guess the Ohio Valley (which is about 150 miles south of us) really got hit: I lived in Tell City, Indiana (just east of Evansville) during the last big storm there in February of 1993, and it was a real mess. They're not nearly as prepared for massive snowfalls as we nothern types are.

All of our critters were crammed into the two big stalls in the barn this morning, except Rasta (the llama). He was by his lonesome in the old chicken area - he's got a much larger "personal space" than the others, and I suppose he just felt too crowded. But I'll bet that when the temperature plummets tonight he'll lose a bit of that and clamber in with everybody else.

That's my real concern now: Kris stayed home today (no point in going to work when your work is driving and the roads are all closed) and when we went out for the morning feeding at 8 am the air temp was 16° F - it's now 10° F. The high temperature on Christmas Day is supposed to hit 8° F, and the low will bottom out at -8° F (which is -22° C for those of you living in sane countries which have fully adopted the metric system). None of this takes into account the wind chill factor, of course, and with the winds from the north west gusting to 30 mph that's a significant bit of cold.

The Arctic blast is supposed to break on Monday, and we'll be back up slightly above freezing. But until then, well, we're just going to try to stay warm.

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Celebrate Yule the 'Viking Way'

Nice little piece from CNN ... even if it's not entirely accurate (Thor's chariot was pulled by twin goats named Donar and Blitzen, not reindeer).

If the Vikings had seen pictures of Santa Claus cruising the skies in a sleigh pulled by reindeer, they probably would have assumed he was catching a ride with Thor, the Norse god of thunder.

(link) [CNN]

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