Aftermath

I didn't bother taking any pictures. At this point, I'm sick of seeing snow anyway.

I have no idea how much snow we got with this last storm (and I didn't hear any official reports). Except I did catch one of the local news anchors mentioning that Philadelphia had broken its record for one winter's total snowfall accumulation and half the season remains yet! He said "they" started keeping official records of such things back in the 1880s.

I didn't bother trying to measure the old snow still on the ground prior or the newfallen snow after. Seemed like at least a foot or so of the powdery stuff just judging by the height of it against my snow plow blade and that was while it was still snowing some yet, but well after having done a first round of plowing earlier to get several inches of really heavy slushy stuff off driveways before it would freeze solid and become immovable later in the day.

By the end of the night when I went back to my own driveway to clear out the couple inches that had fallen while I was doing the neighbors' driveways, I began to hear more clanging than usual from one of my tire chains. Turns out it was falling apart. They were old and worn (much like me). I've noticed before how thin they were getting each year, yet they always seemed to somehow make it through. Not this time. There were four cross-tread links that broke, including three in a row so it was practically falling off the tire as I finished my own driveway and made traction problematic.

At 1:30 AM power went out. It didn't return until about 9 hours later, but I wasn't surprised at that. I'm sure the power company had their hands full. Having suffered longer outages than that a couple times in the last year or two (due to rain storms, not snow), well, 9 hours was no big deal—just bundle up and try to stay as warm as possible through the night.

Spent today going to about 15 places trying to find the right size chains for my tires. No luck, but one place says they will get some in tomorrow. They're expensive, but I can't really plow without'em so whatcha gonna do? Especially with talk of more snow possible early next week, but that's still in the developing stage, too early to tell.

Also in my travels today:

• One stretch of road closed off due to a tree having fallen and leaning on the phone/power wires.
  
• A larger tree down in a house's front yard right around the corner from the tree on the wires. This larger tree came out of the ground, roots and all.
  
• Local Walmart had closed at noon (I got there at 12:30) due to "too much snow on the roof." A guy was stopping each vehicle as it pulled up to the doors to inform them. Guess there was visible sagging or something, I don't know.
  
• Stores seem to be low on or out of a lot of snow removal supplies/equipment for some reason. I'm not sure why.

Oh well, still not as bad as D.C. from what I hear.

I'm declaring a moratoriam on snow for the rest of this winter! There, that oughtta do it...