Snow day

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‘Tis a day not fit for man nor beast.

Its a cold, immensely windy day out there in western Montana. I had originally planned to go to CostCo but after doing a 360 spin through an intersection (albeit at slow speed and with no witnesses) I decided perhaps discretion was the better part of self-preservation and carefully drove back to the house.

For those of you in states that aren’t Montana, there is usually the notion that winter here is brutal, harsh, and runs fourteen months out of the year. Not exactly. You’d think that the harshest winter month would be December, right? Nope. Usually it is February that is the killer. Oh sure, December can get cold but as bad as December gets February is invariably worse.

Today, Im sequestering myself in the house to do drudge work, work on some preparedness things I’ve been letting slide, and, regrettably, studying math. But, it beats being ouside right now. While it isn’t as cold as it could be, nor as snowy, the wind is nuts….blowing, drifting snow is making everything impossible to see.

But….ah, preparedness….I have food, I have heat, I have electricity, and I have internet. That makes this sort of thing much more tolerable.

16 thoughts on “Snow day”

  1. It’s like that here in NE WA, too. Sometimes we wonder if we’ll have snow for Xmas, then get clobbered in January & February. We’ve had a ton of snow this year, most in the last 4 weeks. I’m hoping that today’s snow is the end. But then we have to deal with mud in March & sometimes into April. Oh well – we’re prepared, too. 🙂

  2. I always wanted to visit Montana, but I’ll wait until it warms up a bit. I have relatives out there that I’ve been in contact with, but never met. My great grandfather and great, great grandfather went out to Scotch Coulee to work the mines back in about 1910 or so when there was a miners’ strike here in Western PA. Great grandfather moved back here after a few years, but the great, great stayed in Montana…………

  3. days like today make me happy. all the tenderfoots, Lib’s and wonders get 2nd thoughts of staying in Montana. hoping it drops well below 0 F in Missoula just hammer it in. California is warm and cozy.

  4. I hope this is on topic. In weather as cold as you get, how do you keep your vehicle’s emergency water from freezing? Here in NC it rarely gets below 20, but the couple of weeks in December/January that stayed in the teens froze the liter water bottles I keep in the back of my truck (the bed is covered, but not insulated). How do you keep the water liquid?

  6. I was going through your berg on Sunday. South was a absolute mess as was the freeway going east. Then add snow blowing so thick that visibility was down to 30-40 feet. Made it home safe, but saw too many people in a furry (they were being visited by a tow truck in the meridian).

  7. February is the worst here in the BC Interior, too. Funny to read this, I have done the spin-o-rama myself and quickly but safely turned back home instead.

    • I figured that if I wound up sliding into an accident, I would, at the moment of the accident, think that I would give anything to have made a different choice two minutes earlier. So….playing it safe seemed like a very obvious win.

      • Absolutely. Any accident you walk away from is a win and any accident you avoid in the first place is an even bigger win. I crushed a deer a couple of months ago head on, so to say I am a little overly cautious lately would be an understatement.

  8. Ordinarily I would agree with you (even here in AL) as end of Jan and early Feb being the coldest (funny, the days are getting longer at that time) because that is usually our best chances for snow. (You see a Snow Day, I see pulling idiots, *aherm* drivers out of stranded/wrecked vehicles…)

    But I’ll meet you in the middle this week, it’s roasty hot 76 degrees when it should barely be 55. This is what screws up my gardening something fierce.

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