We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Programming...

...For a tremendous snow storm. It was pretty coming down:

This was taken when the snow first started around 9pm last night.

But had turned into a 10-12 inch mess by morning.

With the promise of sleet and rain threatening to weigh everything down and an afternoon forecast of 2-5 more inches of snow, Doug and I decided to get some exercise, help out the marina, and tackle our dock at 5:30 in the morning. (Yes, super early, but neither one of us had to drive to work so why not. And really, this was a ton of snow, the marina staff is awesome but we wanted to pitch in.) We grabbed a couple shovels from the top of the docks, put our backs into it, and cleared a path to all the liveaboard boats on our dock.

When you shovel a sidewalk it can be difficult to find a place to put all the snow. There always seems to be a few cars in the way. The resulting snow mounds are always a gross combination of snow, dirt, and any unmentionables that have found their way to the city sidewalk. The eyesore sticks around long after the rest of the snow has melted. When you shovel a dock you can just push the snow into the water. There isn't any trash on the dock and the snow would eventually melt into the water below anyway. And when the water is frozen you end up with neat little snow mounds that slowly dissolve.

There has been a short lull in the precipitation so our dock is looking pretty good.

This was taken around 11:30am.

The big concern was heavy snow sitting on the bimini. Too much weight can cause the supportive poles to bend and the top to collapse. So far, so good, the wind prevented too much accumulation.

Our marina staff is incredible and they have been steadily clearing the snow since early this morning. I was lucky enough to snap a photo of one of the docks before anyone had touched it.

The snow was too heavy for the plow attached to the mini all-terrain vehicle so a lot of it had to be done with a slow blower. That's a lot of distance to clear but it sure is looking good. Thanks guys!

Anyone interested in a snow picnic?

I've already said that I wanted a real winter and it's safe to say we got it. Now will someone please remind Mother Nature to pay her heating bill.