It was raining when Daisy went outside at 5 am. It took three times for her to stay outside more than five minutes as it was raining steady and the wind was howling. The weather service said the wind reached 44 mph. I was happy if Daisy stayed inside but she kept wanting to go back outside and wouldn't let me sleep until she got her way. Whenever she came back inside I got an earful from her complaining about the weather. "Hey Daisy, I'm not happy about the weather either."
I checked at 6 am. Rain, wind, and no Daisy.
Around 7 am Daisy was at the door meowing. It was snowing hard. I saw a flash like a lightning bolt occurred nearby. Lightning during a snowstorm? I heard it can happen. Daisy immediately jumped up on my bed and curled next/on me. After washing her wet fur she went to sleep.
It was still blowing and snowing when I woke up at 9 am. I stayed in my warm bed.
At 10 am someone called. No one on the line. A telemarketer? Later I learned Dan had called around then but had terrible static on his end of the line.
I noticed my answering machine had no power. I checked the machine, nothing wrong with it. Then I noticed that the entire house was without power. I called the electric company's power outage reporting line. With a house account and an irrigation account it was confusing as to which option to select as both have the same address. I left a voicemail message.
After 2 pm I called again. While I figured the electric company had many outages due to the wet snow I thought it wouldn't take over 4 hours to fix mine; especially as both my neighbor to the north and the neighbor to the south had power. I chose one option on their automated line to report an outage. A few minutes later I called a number to talk to a person and see if I chose the correct option for my house. No, they had no report I was out of power.
After 5 pm the electric company truck drove past my place. Their boom truck was too tall to fit under my driveway gate. They stopped on the road and checked the lines going to my house. It turns out the fuse on the lines leading from the road pole to my house was bad. They replaced the fuse and I finally had power. Hooray! Apparently the electric company had over 30 outages and over 6,000 people without power.
The wind had died down and the temperature by then was in the mid to upper 30s. The only snow left was the snow in the shade of trees and buildings. I saw a photo from Columbia Falls where someone had made a snowman.
On Sunday Buddy had broken the fence in his "favorite" spot and had gone into the north pasture. I let him be. This morning the cattle stood under various trees as it snowed. Eventually they stood at the gate to the north pasture where Buddy stood on the other side. I left everyone be. It was still snowing and blowing. Later in the afternoon I didn't see Buddy in the north pasture. Either he was around the trees close to the river, else he re-broke the fixed fence and went back to his cows who were now circulating around the pasture and eating. Someday I'll rebuild this fence to be better so he stops doing this.
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| The 'rain shadow' effect out beyond the tree due to the blowing snow. |
We got 1 inch of snow. Elsewhere here are some of the snow totals. Combined with the rain I believe we set a new precipitation record for the date. FYI: my elevation is around/just under 3000 ft.
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