Snow, Snow, Snow

  I woke up to a rather nice blizzard.  I looked out the door to check the weather and several snow flakes were thrust into the entry way by the wind howling outside.  I couldn't see the airport but I could see the school which is about two minutes away.

This year the snow's been a bit late and isn't as bad as in the past. The snow I've shoveled off the porch is barely even to the bottom of the porch.  They say the world is warming up and based on what I've seen round here, it could easily be true.


One year, one of the guys who live a few doors down from me decided to come home during the blizzard.  He lost sight of the light on the maintenance shed and trudged through onward, hoping to find his apartment.  When he finally stopped to take a look to see where he was, he discovered he was standing on top of his next door neighbors roof!

One winter, we had so much snow fall, that I'd often open the front door to a solid drift of snow and had to dig my way out.  I took a trash can and scooped the snow, then dumped it into the bathtub to melt.  I continued the process till I dug my way out.  Since then, I've moved to a different apartment.  The door opens out instead of in so if I get a drift of snow built up, I'll have to call someone to dig me out.....LOL.

Another year, we had so much snow, you could see paths dug down to the doors.  I had to carve stairs in the pile of snow in front of my porch so I could climb up and over the railing, then back down to my door. Out here, people have their own, home built saunas.  That was the year, people ended up digging tunnels of a sort so they could use them.  Saunas out here are used to stay clean and healthy.

There are other parts of the state that have had even worse amounts of snow.  The first year I lived here,  the city of Valdez was inundated with over 500 inches of snow.  The newspaper showed the roads with extremely steep walls almost suffocating the cars as they drove through the thin narrow corridors.

There was a picture of a guy standing on the roof of a two story,  who shoveled the snow upwards, adding it to the already tall pile snuggled up around the house.  The road out of Valdez is often just a corridor until the pile of snow actually fades down to something reasonable.

I don't know about what is happening in Valdez but out here, we haven't gotten that much snow in the past couple of years.  We get flights most of the week instead of once or twice a week as in the past.

I realize its hard to picture walls of snow, houses buried with holes leading through the snow to the surface but used to be quite normal.