Frankenstorm 2012

We didn't die. But we did lose power for 3 days. Some folks still don't have power as of this writing; temperatures are in the 30s and 20s depending upon your elevation. We were fortunate enough to have a gas stove to cook with and a working fireplace to keep the house warm.

I managed to get in my first turns of the season with Kenai Monday night before everything went to hell and a hand basket. We're so used to getting these mondo-predictions for snow fall and it never happening that we really didn't believe the forecasters when they said we could get 1 - 4 feet of snow... We got 22" at my house. The Valley (where I patrol) got 3 some feet, and I honestly wouldn't doubt that areas like Dolly Sods scored around 4 feet. I've seen photos of drifts well over 10 feet in height from a neighboring county.

While pretty, heavy, wet snow is cause for a lot of trouble. The weight of it coupled with the vast amount of it that was dumped upon our wee heads caused roofs to collapse and many, many trees to come crashing down on powerlines, houses, roads, cars, and anything in their way. Its utter and complete destruction and I absolutely FEAR seeing my trails when I get time to get back out on Q. A mere glimpse of the rail trail as I drove past on my way to the barn to check the horses today afforded me with a view of at least 3 downed trees. The only positive is that they will provide Q with some interesting new jumps to consider!

My neighborhood was an absolute MESS of trees. The plow guys had to cut their way into and OUT of the neighborhood during their Monday night plowing session. Hundreds of trees are down in the roads and hundreds more are down in our yards/driveways/etc. The plow even refused to do our drive so we had to shovel it...my driveway is ~500 feet? That's a LOT of shoveling when you consider there were 22" of wet, heavy snow!

But we were lucky overall. Kenai was convinced that this was the greatest event EVER. He ran amok like a total idiot with a blissful grin on his face the whole time. For those not friends with me on Facebook to see my updates, he was like a little child on Christmas morning. He even begged to go out as if he had to crap himself right then and there only to run around in the snow and perform evasive maneuvers to try to get me to leave him out all night. Silly dog. Love him to death - though I wanted to kill him several times because of his enthusiastic antics!

4Runner begone!

Bad snow trees

Good snow trees!