Dang boys, the weatherman was spot on about the cold front that moved in down here in TarHeel-ville last night. The temps dipped into the mid 30's. I actually had to put on shoes and a fleece jacket this morning when me & Ace did some backyard retriever work. It was f-r-e-e-z-i-n-g!

You boys heard anythang from Pork, Dogpower, BrownDog or Jon up thar in the Land of Cheese and Summer Sausage? Oh yeah, that's right, they's probably out there getting jiggy with the snowblower and them funny looking rectangular shaped shovels up there on the tundra. Ya'll boys take it easy and don't throw your backs out lifting that heavy white stuff off your dang driveways and sidewalks.

Tonight, we might git us some more low temps down here in the Carolinas. Guess I'll have to put another log on the fire. I'll be thinking about my buddies up thar on the Tundra tonight while I'm taking a sip on a mint julip by the fire, with Mrs. Tarheel Blue curled up next to me.

TB

I believe PnB is trying to dig his Brit out of the 18" snow blanket on his yard. I'm about an hour north and we have about a foot of new snow. Can't wait to get out hunting in the morning. Should be around zero tonight but warming into the 20s later in the day. Perfect rooster chasing weather as I see it.

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Here’s a report from my piece of the tundra… and remember that you requested it.

I’m located a little south of PnB and we didn’t get as much snow, only 14”.  But it was a wet heavy snow mixed with freezing rain and lots of thunder & lightning.  It started late Tuesday afternoon and blizzard warnings were issued for Tuesday night and Wednesday. Closing announcements for just about everything were being issued.

I pretty much had all my snow moval equipment ready to go (not sure why most people call it snow “removel”.  I try to only move it once.), so I resigned myself to hunkering down with Mrs. Dogpower, watching the light show (thunder snow is pretty stuff) and waiting for it all to stop.

After dozing off into a nice deep sleep, the phone rings at 1:30 am.  It was my son who is with the emergency response team in our local town.  He told me there was an ambulance call to the house next to the clubhouse on our hunt club.  The 93 year old neighbor lady had fallen and was injured.  We have a shared driveway that’s almost a half mile long and the EMS director wanted to know if we could open it up for the 2 wheel drive ambulance that would be getting there in about 10 minutes.  No problem, I had the equipment ready to role.

I went out to the shed and fire up the old rusty but trusty 84 Chevy half ton plow truck and headed up the road through snow falling so hard I had a hard time seeing the road.   It looked like we had about 8 to 10 inches of snow on the ground by this time.  When I got there, a County deputy and the fire department Tahoe were there waiting for me.  I dropped the plow and headed down the driveway.  I made it about 30’.  That’s all the old beast could do.

Back to the end of the driveway and was told by the deputy that he called for a county plow truck, but they were about a half hour away.  The Tahoe driver decided to try to take the EMTs down to the house and made it so they were able to attend to my neighbor but the ambulance still wouldn’t be able to make it.  So back to the shed to get the heavy equipment – the John Deere 4440 with an 8’ three point snow blower.  This baby will move anything.

I got back up there and started chugging down the driveway throwing the snow out 30’, but I pushed it too hard and burned up the slip clutch before I got half way.  The only thing I had left was my John Deere 4020 loader tractor, but it wasn’t plugged in and won’t start in cold weather unless the engine heater runs for about an hour. 

Luckily the injuries my neighbor had weren’t too severe and the EMTs were treating her, but she still needed to go to the hospital.  The County plow truck finally got there and made one pass down the driveway and she was able to get out.  I got back home about 3:00 am and there were a couple utility trucks in front of my house working on the power line that feeds another one of my neighbors house.  Seems either a lightning strike or a downed tree had knocked out their power (among the first of many in the upcoming hours).

And so begins the saga of this storm.  I could continue but it doesn’t get much better and this story is already too long.

As I repeatedly tell myself… keep smiling.

I made an oops trying to correct a typo in the above post...hit quote instead of edit and can't delete this. 

Once again...