My wife warned that this might happen, and it's not that surprising considering we had the heaviest snowfall of the year just a couple of weeks back. But come on, it's spring! Enough with the snow.
For those who hail from climes where snow is a novelty, let me assure you that the novelty soon wears off when you live somewhere that measures its snowfall by the foot. You see they're prepared for it here. It's not like New Zealand where a skiff of snow is enough to close the schools, shut down the roads and spend the day making snow men or admiring the transformed scenery with a cup of hot chocolate. Here life goes on. If it didn't nothing would happen all winter, when the snow doesn't melt for weeks. If you don't clear it it quickly becomes overwhelming. We didn't clear our deck off last winter and it looked something like this for ages.
Snow ploughs (or rather plows) take care of the roads, you can hear them grating along the street in the middle of the night, but each is expected to do their bit with their own yard. For us that means the walk from the door to the drive, and the drive itself, have to be shoveled as clean as possible and then scattered with salt to melt what's left.
I shouldn't really complain. Thanks to warmer weather there wasn't that much left to clear this time, though there was still plenty of the white stuff clinging to the lawn even this morning. It only took a few minutes to clear off the car and shovel the debris onto the grass. In the past I've spent over an hour out there making it safe. And Pennsylvania got off relatively lightly this winter, unlike New York which had several falls over a foot.
Anyway, things are looking up though. As I wrote this yesterday afternoon a thunderstorm passed overhead. That's encouraging - spring really is on the way after all.
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