The scurs were convinced that the Weather Eye had made a grave error and the temps would continue high with the precip dry. Will we return to high and dry or are we stuck with real winter for a while? Starting Wednesday, mostly sunny with highs in the mid-teens and lows near 10. Thursday, partly sunny with falling temperatures and lows in the mid-teens below zero. Mostly cloudy on Friday with a modest chance of afternoon snow. Highs near 0 with lows in the low teens below zero. Saturday, partly sunny with highs near 5 above and lows near 10 below. Mostly cloudy for Sunday with a good chance of snow. Highs in the low teens and lows in the low single digits. Monday, mostly cloudy with a few lingering forenoon snow showers. Highs around 10 with lows around zero. Partly sunny for Tuesday with highs in the single digits above zero and lows back to near -10. We continue to gain daylight at the expense of the colder temperatures. On January 28th we will have gained 13 minutes of daylight in the morning and an additional 35 minutes in the evening since December 28th. The normal high for January 28th is 23 and the normal low is 4. The scurs are a plucky lot. When life deals them lemons in summer they make lemonade. In winter they make ice cream. Go figure.
Last week’s snow wasn’t a complete surprise but the cold that followed was something we hadn’t been used to. We were spoiled during much of the month of January as well as December. At the SROC in Waseca they averaged about 5 degrees above normal for December. Contrast to November which averaged only 1.7 degrees warmer than December! No question we’ve been spoiled for much of the winter up to this point, so it comes as no surprise that it would turn cold sometime in January. The frost continues to go deeper in the soil along with ice depth on the lakes. That doesn’t mean lakes are 100% safe as several people on Madison Lake found out the hard way recently.
The snow cover actually isn’t a bad thing either. For those with alfalfa hay, snow helps insulate the crowns from the below zero wind chills. Given recent hay prices alfalfa hay needs all the help it can get. The snow helps one know also what’s perhaps out and about in the animal world. After the recent snow I made a drive by the sloped hay field a mile south of the kindly neighbors. I was amazed by all the tracks coming out of the woods and the amount of holes dug in the snow to feed on last fall’s stubble. My first instinct was the tracks belonged to deer although my second thought was that it could be these vegan coyotes I keep hearing about.
In the yard I’d held off filling the bird feeders until after the snow fell. It was dark and snowing like mad when I got home Friday night, so figured it would be easier to see in the morning. I’ve been pleased to watch some of my sparrow control experiments continue to bear fruit. Shortening the foot pegs on the one thistle feeder has definitely deterred them and in their place was a goldfinch on every perch. I don’t pay a buck a pound for thistle seed to feed house sparrows. I’ve received some help too. As I came in the house Saturday morning I heard a larger bird flapping around in the spruce tree by the house. I glanced up to see a Cooper’s hawk rousting the sparrows from their hiding place. It flew off in hot pursuit of its quarry.
The colder weather of course always brings with it un-pleasantries. The well continued to function fine, but the forced air furnace that had been sending some subtle hints decided not to be so subtle anymore. The furnace had run fine for many moons up until a few weeks ago when it hiccupped. It cycled, then the fan would continue to run, not allowing the burner to light and cycle again, cooling the house down even more. This is not a bad thing in July but in January, not so much. I shut the furnace off, let it think about it, then turned it on again. It cycled and ran fine, shut off and cycled again. Good deal, I thought and checked on it through the day to make sure it was still functioning properly.
It worked well until early Saturday morning when I woke only to hear it cycle while the fan continued to run constantly. I hurled some invectives, got out of my warm bed and stumbled downstairs to the basement where I repeated the reset process. It cycled then started and cycled again, so I went back to bed. About the time I started to doze off I heard the fan running constantly, again. More invectives and I went to play with the furnace some more. I could see the ignitor was trying to light it but the burners weren’t kicking in. Definitely out of my league so I shut it down for good. I went upstairs and dug out the space heater. It of course hadn’t been run for a long time, making the house smell like burnt dust. Back to the basement where I knocked down the cobwebs as I was positive we’d be hauling the thing up the stairs. Luckily I was mistaken. I called the plumbing and heating guru, who called me back and was on top of it promptly, especially for a cold Saturday morning. It took a couple trips but he got it right and it’s running like new again. Plus, we had a great visit complete with some chuckles while connecting the dots on people we knew and places we’d been.
In the meantime I tried out the snow blower on the 8+ inches of fluff that Old Man Winter dumped in the yard. Mrs. Cheviot needed to get out for work, so I had to make something happen. Even though the 656 was plugged in, at 5 below it was a little balky at first. Once it warmed up though, it performed wonderfully. Plus it was warm inside the cab, a foreign concept in the history of ranch snow removal. I blew the driveway out and had the area in front of the garage cleaned out in record time. I was careful not to purposely point the blower at windows, siding, cars, etc. It was amazing how far it tossed the snow or anything else for that matter. Given our location on top of a hill, along with the speed and trajectory it was flinging the snow out of the chute, I wondered if I was hitting the blacktop with some of Ruby’s frozen “doggie deposits.” You might want to be extra cautious when driving past the ranch after a snow storm from now on.
See you next week...real good then.