Sunday Snow Update

This is the backyard that awaited me when I woke up this morning. Notice the thick layer of snow on top of the mostly uninsulated garage, and the huge icicle that is hanging from the small section of roof over the picture window? The terracotta tile I mentioned in yesterday's post is identifiable only by the extra mound of snow that finally covered the sedum completely. Where the lions used to be, misshapen cones of snow stand guard near the front porch instead.

My boyfriend is using a hard plastic shovel to clean most of the snow off our cars until using a regular scraper is actually doable. Here's my car (a Chevy Impala) that was completely clean when I got home from work yesterday at 7:30pm. To be fair, some of that snow probably blew off of the neighbor's roof... but still. That's a lot of snow! And do you see the top edge of my neighbor's 3 ft tall chain link fence in the upper left corner? There are drifts where I can only see the top 2 rows of chain link "diamonds."

I would say that the "low spots" are about 14 inches deep, and there are drifts well over 2-1/2 feet tall. It's still snowing as I type (hence the greyness of these pictures) and it's supposed to be so cold all week that I have no idea when the snow will finally go away.

As I told Snappy in response to his comments on yesterday's snow posts, having snow in April is not unheard of here in Cleveland. Having it in these kinds of quantites that actually stick to the ground is... unless you're in the snow belt on the eastern half of Cleveland. (And don't you dare feel sorry for those people, even if they did have 30 inches of snow this weekend. They knew about this snow belt thing before they bought a house there--this isn't a new phenomenon!)

On the bright side, my "sled dog" was having a blast mushing down the sidewalks during our walk last night. She's not smart enough to keep from getting tangled around the rustic platform birdfeeder that we put up temporarily for the spring rush now that my twine-and-bamboo border edging is buried in the snow... but she can pull me through the drifts whenever I need a little extra assistance.