It is 50 degrees here and while we're out enjoying the heat wave, the skies get darker and it starts sleeting or hailing or whatever the little pellets are! This is Nexus.
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Ashley Roseberry, owner of Kurbis, sent these great shots from her place in Michigan. Talk about snow photos! Thank you, Ashley! What a sparkling, jewel-encrusted landscape this morning! Clouds were rolling in while I was out taking photos but some of them are pretty good. I am only posting this one before I leave for work. 
My neck of the woods this morning. It is beautiful! But I cannot say as much for the road since I must be driving on it later today. I went out and took a few photos after the dogs came back in. We don't have a lot of snow but with a layer of ice on top, snow shoes may have been useful. Breakfast afterward included a chicken & pineapple hot dog cut up into what I call 'pan luck.' It was good! Who would think? Apparently not many. Kroger had them marked way down as a manager's special! 
Hey, Anna Knoll in Mississippi, have I got a snowball for you! Taya also loves this stuff. You can come up here and the two of you can go dashing through the snow. This afternoon after it stopped snowing, the wind became stronger and I looked out and watched snow cyclones dance! I bundled up (way, way up!), and went out into the frigid air and took something like 120 photos under an ever-changing sky. These are my Pick Four. I love living up high but there's a whole lot of wind crossing these hills! You know it's been cold when you take the dogs out and "9 degrees, feels like -1" feels downright warm. You know it's been cold when Weather cast says "Not as cold with lows around 3 above" makes you smile in gratitude! You know it's been cold when the dog's water bowl freezes on the kitchen floor. Found out that I can heat for 10 below and I can heat for 30 mile per hour winds but not for both! We're good here, hope the same is true for everyone else and your animals.
[Svante is Multiple Champion Red Top's Klatjofs, Finland's standard longhaired dachshund of the year in 2011, also father of my Viljo. Svante is owned by Jarkko and Tia Eskelinen, Finland.] Tia writes: We have been tracking a deer, it had been hit by a car yesterday morning. We were tracking for two hours yesterday evening and went back this morning. It has been snowing the whole night and during this morning too, there was about 10cm fresh snow in the woods and it was quite hard for a dachshund. But Svante did it, he found deer still alive after two hours of tracking! Deer was young and its back leg was broken. Well done Svante! Well done, indeed, in four more inches of snow on top of what was already there! Congratulations on a super and successful effort!  Photo by Tia Eskelinen LAST winter, on February 18, I posted the following on Facebook: Sure can't complain about the weather this winter but thought I'd share this little story. It's been 4 weeks since the night I drove home from work in freezing rain. I slowly but surely made it the 30 miles until I turn off SR 37 onto Portie Flamingo Road where, from that point on, no salt truck ever goes. I managed to slip and slide another mile with very poor traction and I was still on the flattest, straightest part of the road. I stopped. Opened the door. Put my foot down on the road and it was solid ice. I knew then that I had two choices. Drive on, put my car in a ditch, and walk home. Or park the car as soon as I could, put on my boots, and walk home. I chose the Parking option. I took my field trial beating stick to use as a walking stick and started walking. There was no walking the road. I had to walk in the ditches and baby step across driveways. Never saw a person. Never heard a dog bark. All I heard was the sound of freezing rain hitting my jacket. It took me two hours to walk 2.5 miles! I got home at 3 am. I took this photo of my jacket covered in a thin layer of ice. My purse looked the same!  Freezing rain had formed a thin layer of ice on my jacket as well as a thick layer of ice on the road On Facebook, Linda Sullivan of Nebraska replied: Get a pair of "yak trax" to store in the CRV--if you ever need them, they slip on your shoes or boots. With any luck you will never need to use them but they are absolutely wonderful if you have to navigate ice on foot. I did not buy a pair of Yaktrax last year. But THIS winter, with another Facebook prompting from Linda, I did. I went online and found Yaktrax on sale at Amazon. I figured they would also come in handy when road walking my dogs this winter so for a few dollars more, I got the somewhat better, sturdier Pro version. Well, tonight I had occasion to use them for the first time. I could not believe how effective they were on the ice-covered porch, sidewalk, and driveway! Wow! If I had have known these things existed, I would have gotten a pair years ago! They are easy to use, comfortable to wear, they're not sharp or spiked (so you can walk on the floor okay to get to the door), yet I eventually got the distinct impression that it would be impossible to slip or slide in these things. I say "eventually" because at first I did not trust them and kept walking like I was walking on...ice. Before very long, though, I was striding along like the ice didn't exist. Great invention! Thank you, Linda, for telling me about Yaktrax - and telling me again!   Taya had just gone out and was taking in the wonder of it all. Here she is watching snow blow off of the roof.  Taya loving the stuff. I had fun in it, too, AFTER I finally got home last night. Driving in it is not quite so great.  Like a phoenix rising!  Morning Colors We're at that 'perfect' fine line between rain and snow = freezing rain. But I am NOT complaining! At least not until it freezes solid! Also about my GREAT car which happens to be in the photo: Last week on my way home from visiting Hannelore and Sue, the odometer clicked 350,000 miles! I put 266,000 on my last vehicle but THIS is the best one I have ever had.  2000 Honda CRV, with odometer now at 350,000 Taya saw her first snow at 4:30 this morning. Not surprisingly, she liked it as probably most longhairs do! I cannot say that I shared her enthusiasm, or gave the dogs many minutes in it at that time of day. Snow gave way to sleet, then to rain, and it looks like it is all trying to make up for the hot, dry summer. I was up and down all night, heavy winds rattling the house, beating the flag pole, flapping the metal roof on the tractor shed. I am up on a higher elevation so thankfully do not have to worry about flooding. The wind, however, can be something else. Nonetheless, the strong gusts here were NOTHING compared to what millions of Americans went through during the night and are enduring right now. I keep thinking about the evacuation of 200 patients in a NYC hospital. My God, what a job, but especially in the midst of such a storm! Many unsung heroes are born at times like this. KUDOS and BLESSINGS to ALL of them.
One of the great things about brisk wind when we are out on our daily walk is the sound that it makes in the pines along the way. In some places, it sounds like a waterfall. Elsewhere, it sounds just like a car on a gravel road. Sometimes the wind whistles. Other times it sighs. It makes the trunks of the oaks creak and groan. Old dead leaves dance. And the feathers on the dogs flow like waves. I like these things. : )
My monster icicle started a number of days ago at the eve of the roof outside the kennel door and eventually reached the ground (pictured). I measured it today. At 6' 6" it is a foot taller than I am. I have found myself greeting it like a person.  Snow has virtually buried the 24-inch ex-pen panels I'd strung around the front porch for puppy Seiko. And here's what Kasi thinks of the weather.   |
