Getting buried in white stuff

[Bill, KD0HG]

Rain changed to snow at 9 PM last night.

Yes, I'm telecommuting today.

----------------------------------------
URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DENVER CO
456 AM MDT WED OCT 28 2009

...MAJOR WINTER STORM FOR NORTHERN COLORADO THROUGH THURSDAY...

.A STRONG STORM SYSTEM NEAR THE FOUR CORNERS WILL MOVE SLOWLY
ONTO THE CENTRAL PLAINS THURSDAY. THIS STORM WILL SPREAD HEAVY
WET SNOW OVER THE NORTHERN COLORADO MOUNTAINS...THE FRONT RANGE
CITIES...AND ONTO THE NORTHEAST PLAINS. IN ADDITION TO THE SNOW...
GUSTY NORTH TO NORTHEAST WINDS WILL DEVELOP PRODUCING AREAS OF
BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW.

TRAVEL WILL BECOME DIFFICULT OR IMPOSSIBLE BY WEDNESDAY
AFTERNOON. RESIDENTS SHOULD PREPARE FOR A LONG DURATION OF WINTER
STORM CONDITIONS FROM WEDNESDAY INTO THURSDAY.

PERIODS OF SNOW WILL CONTINUE THROUGH THURSDAY. THE SNOW WILL BE
HEAVY AT TIMES ESPECIALLY THIS MORNING. SNOWFALL ACCUMULATIONS
WILL RANGE FROM 18 TO 36 INCHES WITH UP TO 4 FEET POSSIBLE IN
FAVORED UPSLOPE AREAS EAST OF THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE. NORTH TO
NORTHEAST WINDS GUSTING AS HIGH AS 40 MPH WILL PRODUCE EXTENSIVE
BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW OVER OPEN AREAS.

[Art]

Same here in the foothills Bill. . . .
Øba

[Bill, KD0HG]

Just ventured out in the diesel. I live at the west end of an old 2 mi ranch road, and my daughter in her Ford Focus isn't gonna make it home from school. Even the paved county road is a mess.

Time to play taxi.

I'd plow the road with the tractor, but no cab, no heat and the XYL says those have to wait until I hit the lottery. LOL

[flintstone mop]

I better get my snow blower thrower out. Yous guys are sending your stuff to us courtesy of the Jet Stream.
Bill, That pic looks like last year's snow fall.

Fred

[Bill, KD0HG]

We've had some major snows here the last 5 years, fred.

Yes, my daughter did get stuck. Just got home after yanking her out of the ditch. Her car, that is. There's an inch of ice under maybe a foot of snow right now and the wind is kicking up drifts. Not supposed to stop until mid day tomorrow.

Got a call from the radio station, the power is out in downtown Boulder and they're running on generator. A Ford 300 inch straight six running on natural gas up on the roof.

Get that snow blower out.

[WA1GFZ]

Please keep it to yourself.

[Bill, KD0HG]

OK.

As of 3 PM this afternoon and it's doing an inch per hour:
Drifting is getting to the point that I can't even see where the road is. Almost whiteout now even during the day.

Drifting is a big problem here on the lone prairie.

Doesn't look like this one is heading for New England, it's heading north of the Great Lakes into VE land. Yer lucky. This time.

[K1JJ]

Oh, how I miss colorful Colorado - and the smell of Coors hops in Golden.... [sigh]

Nice looking ranch, Bill.

T

[k4kyv]

I'm still bogged down in the wet stuff here.  It finally stopped raining long enough for me to wrap up the siding repair this morning.  Now all I need to do is paint the whole thing.  Wx forecast calls for rain in the 70%-100% probability range for the next three days.  The long-term forecast calls for a few days of dry wx starting Sunday.  But this year, as the time approaches, the predicted dry days get replaced by predictions of more rain and a projected 5-day dry spell ends up lasting 1 1/2 or two days at most. I don't think I have ever seen as much rain as persistent as what we are having this year.  It's hard to exterior paint when we never have a dry spell that lasts long enough for the wood to dry out. Even when it is not raining, the cloudy wx and now the ever shortening days don't allow for much drying.  I'm beginning to think about temporarily covering the unpainted wall with house wrap once again to get through the winter with minimal damage to the bare wood.  This project should have been finished by the 1st of July.

[K5UJ]

Bill, that system is supposed to get here next.  Tonight and tomorrow supposed to be windy with rain/thunderstorms.

Rob

[K7NCR]

It's hard to exterior paint when we never have a dry spell that lasts long enough for the wood to dry out. Even when it is not raining, the cloudy wx and now the ever shortening days don't allow for much drying.  I'm beginning to think about temporarily covering the unpainted wall with house wrap once again to get through the winter with minimal damage to the bare wood.  This project should have been finished by the 1st of July.

Don,
You could do what they do around here in the winter. Set up a framework around your work area (scaffolding, etc). Then warm up the enclosed space with a portable fuel powered heater (salamander) to dry the wood out and dry the paint.
Norm K7NCR

[WB2RJR]

Bill,

Clear, sunny, and no snow up in west central Wyoming.

My wife has been trying to leave our house on Lookout Mountain in Golden since yesterday. She has a job interview in Billings on Monday but wanted to stop up here on her way there. Last I talked to her there was 4+ feet of snow at our house there.
Maybe they will open the roads by tomorrow, most of I 80 was closed this morning. So no real way to get from there to here.

Marty

[Bill, KD0HG]

Bill,

Clear, sunny, and no snow up in west central Wyoming.

My wife has been trying to leave our house on Lookout Mountain in Golden since yesterday. She has a job interview in Billings on Monday but wanted to stop up here on her way there. Last I talked to her there was 4+ feet of snow at our house there.
Maybe they will open the roads by tomorrow, most of I 80 was closed this morning. So no real way to get from there to here.

Marty

Marty:

Your wife isn't going out of the area anytime soon..The winds have really picked up here in Larimer and I just got in after three hours on the tractor trying to clear our road with the loader. My bones are frozen. It's drifting almost as fast as I could clear it. They issued a blizzard warning for NE CO. The only direction you can really travel is south, I-80 is closed in WY, I-70 is closed into Kansas, I-76 to Nebraska is closed, I-25 is closed between Ft. Collins and Cheyenna and 287 up to Laramie is closed.

Better to be safe and warm.