April Ends in Blizzard

After staying up for 36 hrs straight due to television coverage of Will and Kate's Royal Wedding, I went to bed on Friday night listening to the howling wind of a blizzard. My main concern was the boys who had been gone on a week-long youth retreat in the city and were due home around 10pm. But Nelson was talking care of it and I needed sleep.


Midnight - I found Nelson in the kitchen. He'd just brought the boys home. With white-out road conditions and 60kph winds, it had taken him 2 hrs - instead of the usual 30 mins - to drive into town and pick up the boys from the drop-off point. But his work cell phone was buzzing with alarms and he had to get back out to check well sites. I went back to bed.

4:30 am - I woke find the power out. Nelson still wasn't back. Instead of going back to bed, I cuddled with a blanket on the recliner and soon fell asleep.

8:30 am - I woke when JJ wandered into the living room. He asked if I'd phoned SaskPower to inform them of the outage. No, I hadn't. But I did then. Smart kid.

10:30 am - Took this photo:

Noon - Nelson finally came home. When he reached his farthest site, it'd been too dangerous to drive back. He'd slept the rest of the night in his truck then continued his work as the weather cleared.

The house was cold enough to sit under blankets for warmth. Nelson brought out the emergency candles for heat and then went to bed.

4 pm - Storm ended although still windy. I wanted to take my daily walk out to take photos of flooded road but couldn't bring myself to walk through the drifts and freeze without a warm house to come back to.

5:30 pm - Nelson awoke hungry. I was going to serve cold ham sandwiches, but he had other ideas. Although we can't drive our motorhome anymore the appliances still work - on propane. Nelson got the stove working. He threw a frozen pizza in the oven and boiled a kettle of water one of the 2 small burners. Yum, pizza and hot ramen noodles for supper. Was going to make tea but tummy was warm and full.

7 pm - Power finally came back on and we settled in to warm up.

 8 pm - I realized if I wanted photos I'd better get going. I went and took these:

Wherever you see snow on the road it's really ice. And slippery when you're wearing rubber boots!

Although the water had receded off the road surface, the ground was still plenty mucky. And with the water level still high, there's a good possibility of rising over the road again as this new snow melts.

Do you see how there's a handful of icy snow at the bottom of each branch grouping? Well, those patches of ice are a couple inches above the water level and they waved back and forth with every gust of wind. Quite pretty, actually.

The wind was still howling when I went out on this photo journey and after being out for only 10 mins or so, the index finger I use to snap the photos was aching from cold. I was wearing those little magic gloves as I do when the temperature is so cold in the winter, but it was only at 0c tonight which is the freezing point.

Yet, the wind whipping across the water has a dangerous beauty to it. In this photo below, there's nothing hanging from the fence on either side of the post - just icicles that have been dipped like candles in the water with every splash.

Here's one last pic of the icicles on the corner post.

I sure hope this is the last we've seen of snow this spring. What will tomorrow bring?

Stay tuned as I have some good news to share in my next post.