What’s the deepest snow you’ve ever had to dig out of? I think my record is about 27 inches, which was a nightmare, because lifting the snow shovel up and over the 3 and 4-foot drifts got old real fast. I parked one of my cars out in the street. The snow drifts almost covered the roof.
I’m wondering how deep snow gets before a snowblower becomes useless. I recently read about Califonia getting bombed by 5 feet of snow and can’t imagine the digging that awaited those poor folks. Me, I’d put up a “For Sale” sign and head for Key West.
Tell me about digging your way out of your worst snowstorm.
One year my parents’ house a little to the west of Baltimore got two feet. We had just finished shoveling off our ridiculously long driveway (I’m bad with distances, but it was at least 100 feet long, and probably longer) when another two feet got dumped on us. That was the day we pushed the minivan out to where the road had been plowed and bought a snowblower.
As I recall, about halfway through the shoveling process (I believe it was just me and my brother at the time), I sat down and refused to do any more because I hated it so much. After an hour or so of that my parents let me inside. Normally I wouldn’t be proud to admit to such brattiness, but that day just sucked, and my parents should have realized they needed a snow blower after the first big snow of the first winter we lived in that house.
6 Feet, drifts much higher. In Donner Pass, skiing for a week while staying at at cabin. A big storm blew through for 3 days dropping about 8 feet of snow. We had to dig out the cars so they could plow the parking lot, then they just gave up and told us to get rid of the cars.
Second day we had to dig out we literally skied over our car without noticing. Only the antena sticking out of the snow gave us a clue. I may still have pictures somewhere that I could locate from that trip. The snowblower (huge two stage model mounted on a payloader) would get within 3-4 feet of the cars, then we’d shovel like crazy for 30 minutes and pull the cars out, then move on to the next one. Since the ski areas were closed (too much snow) and avy danger was too great to ski we had little better to do.
Oh god, I’m so jealous… I’d kill to see a snowfall like that, just once. The most I’ve had to shovel is about 9 or 10 inches when I was at university in Sheffield.
By the way, by coincidence, just yesterday I came across this picture:
Taken in Moncton, Canada, this week. All I can say is :eek:
Living on top of a mountain in western Maryland, about eight years ago, we got about 3 feet of snow. We had a really long driveway, too. Our (then) youngest daughter was about five at the time, and floating around somewhere, we have a pic of her, standing on the edge of the shoveled driveway, right next to the snow; it was almost up to the top of her head.
While spending time in Donner, we would often see snowbanks of 25’+. (That’s feet, not inches) I had to duck skiing under powerlines, and we used to do ski runs off the roof of the 3 story cabin. Trust me, they get a lot of snow out there. Maybe I’ll have to dig out (ouch) some pictures.
Snowblowers can handle an awful lot of snow. I’d venture to say that a snowblower can handle just about any 2 or 3 day accumulation. Basically, if it’s over the height of the snowblower, you just sort of push it into the snowbank, which topples the top part of the snow down. Back up, push it in again. Eventually you’ll get it all.
As far as my worst, well, being of the female pursuasion, I get to sit inside while the big manly men dig things out. Still, I’ve seen my share of snow, and had to wade through it and such. I think the record daily snowfall here was around 51 inches in one day in 1985. I admit, I was here, but have no real memory of it.
I do remember several years where the snow completely covered the sliding glass doors that led out onto our deck. And last year, Mr. Athena had to snowblow at least four or five feet off our deck after allowing it to pile up for several months.
This reminds me, there’s a famous local photo of the snow in the Keeweenaw Peninsula (which sticks up into Lake Superior from the rest of the UP), where all you can see is the top cross bars of the telephone poles sticking out of the snow. It comes to within a foot or two of the first cross bar.
The second floor of my grandparents’ lake house in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York had sliding glass doors that opened into space. No balconies, no railings, just sliding glass doors opening to a 12-foot drop. I never understood why until the weekend that we got about eleven feet of snow in three days. We put on our cross-country skis, and out the second floor doors we went.
Anchorage is generally protected from large snowfalls by the mountain ranges, but I remember a blizzard when I was a kid that drifted snow up nearly to the eave of our one-story house. Since a standard door is 6’8", I’m guessing that I had to dig through about 8’ of snow to clear it out, while my father sat in the kitchen laughing at me.
Now, the folks in Valdez, AK, which is on Prince William Sound (on the other side of the mountains from us) get an average snowfall of 25’, with a record of 40’.
Anyway, the one in Baltimore from two years ago was as bad as anything I can remember and I grew up in Maine. Maybe it just seemed awful because it’s impossible to move that much snow in the city. That was about 26" over 2 days or so. What you don’t realize is that there’s just no where to put it. In row houses, you stack it on your front lawn until it’s falling back where you shovelled it.
You try shovelling the ROAD and the SIDEWALK onto the little strip of grass between the two, but there’s just not enough room.
And, you need to shovel in “tiers” because you can’t lift 26 inches of snow piled up on your shovel and throw it over your head.
Plow doesn’t hit our street for days, so we need to shovel the street.
lol, no, not drifts. There was well over 3 feet of snow on our deck last week, before Mr. Athena plowed it.
I’m about a mile from Lake Superior. 200-300 inches of snow a year is common, and no, it doesn’t melt. Packs down some, but once it starts, it doesn’t go away 'til April.
Yeah, but you said “Lake Ontario.” We Lake-dwellers are picky. Lake Superior ain’t Lake Ontario, and I’m offended that you group them in the same catagory
Drifts, schmifts. Newberry Michigan, UP. Snow drifts that bury the first floor of your house, and most of the town. You go to school on snow shoes or snow mobile. Who cares if it’s “just drifts” at that point? You still have to dig yourself out of it.
I remember one snow back in the '70s, near Chicago. A friend of mine lived way out in the country. After we dug out, we went out to visit him. Out in the country there were drifts well over 10 feet high. Some places along the road had snow stacked up well over 15 feel high. It was like driving through tunnels of snow. There were long sticks or flags placed in the top of some of the drifts to mark the buried cars so the end loaders didn’t destroy them.
Once when I was about…six or so, we got pounded by a huge combination of blizzard/ice-storm. IIRC, we ended up with about three feet of snow with a nice layer of ice on top. (This would’ve been in South Jersey, sometime around…94, maybe?)
Also when I was little - about ten? - we were visiting family in Cleveland, OH, when they got smacked by some serious lake-effect snow. About three feet, again, I think.
Last year in Hokkaido, Japan. It snowed 180cm in 3 days, more with drifts.
We had just bought our house, five hours drive from our apartment, and I was alone with my 3 year old and 7 year old, doing a bit of unpacking before going back to school after the winter holidays.
Because the house was new, we had no stocks of food, so when it snowed about thigh deep the first night, and was still going strong, I called my inlaws and asked them to bring us some food. They live about three minutes away by car, and we have small shops within a few hundred yards, but taking out a toddler was impossible, and it was unsafe to leave them. Three hours later, the inlaws called to say that as fast as they shovelled, it came back and they were shattered. So soup and rice that night. Next day was the same, except it was just miso soup (no veg or meat!) and rice. The next night it was hot water and rice. The kids were great, they never complained. I spent the time going out for half an hour at a time in an attempt to keep the heater vents clear.
The fourth day dawned brilliantly sunny and my kids went out to play - did my head in when they ran past the ground floor window at MY HEAD HEIGHT! (And the ground level is about 80cm lower than our indoor floor level!)
Driving was impossible for another three or four days so the kids got an extended holiday which they minded not at all. When we got back to our apartment, our pipes had frozen, despite having drained them before we went away. (Husband had spent the week coordinating the snow clearing operation, and had slept on the floor of his office.) Misery for another week as parts were obtained for the burst bits. No hot water and -20C at the minimum. Luckily the heat worked.
