Election judge and snow

Yesterday I again volunteered as an election judge.  Along with Donna, Terry, Ted and Joan.  William didn't show but in the end we didn't need his help.  More people (50% to 60%) now cast absentee ballots but we still had plenty of people show up at the polls as election interest was high.  The number of people were steady but not overwhelming.   Once or twice people had to briefly wait for one of the six voting booths and a few times briefly no one was at the polls.

The election went smooth with no problems.  Fortunately a voter who also works at the Flathead Electric Co-op warned us the co-op had two brief planned power outages that day, once at 8:30 and and the other outage at 4:30 pm  (or as it turns out - thereabouts).   The voting machine can run on battery backup power - and it did with no problems while we did our work by flashlight the several minutes the power was off.

Again a long day as we were there before 6 am to setup before opening the polls at 7 am.  After the polls were closed at 8 pm we had the site taken down and cleaned up a little after 9 pm.  The drive back to the election department in Kalispell was slower as by now it had started snowing with lighter and heavier bands of snow during the drive.   Donna accompanied me as a second person with the election material and we were checked out and done a little before 10 pm.

The next morning I woke up to snow and below freezing temperatures.

Winter has arrived early.  We hardly had any Fall.   For the first 10 months of 2018 we had three months of above normal temperatures and seven months of below normal temperatures.  So far November is well below normal.  The weather service is promising us a warmer Winter and I hope it is true.  After all this cold weather, and the past two colder than normal Winters, we deserve a break.  Whoever stole our global warming... they need to give it back!!!