I got up early this morning like I always do, and flipped on the outside light to see this little birch tree in the back yard all bent down. Its the tree where I hang a couple of my bird feeders and I had to go out (later) and move them to a new place.
I was up at 3am and about 15 minutes later (thankfully I had made my coffee!) the power went out. Actually, I was surprised it was on at all the way the wind was blowing and after seeing the coating of ice outside.
Surprisingly the lights were back on about an hour later. When it got light enough to get some pictures I went out to see how icy it was. The trees are glistening in the sun so it looks very pretty and once the ice melts off the little birch I am hoping it will straighten back up.
My landlady bought a roof rake a few days ago and we have all been busy getting as much snow off the roof as we can. It turned out that the storm yesterday became more rain and freezing rain than snow, but we still needed to be ready.
She told me that people were coming up to New Hampshire to buy roof rakes from as far away as Connecticut and that the store only had a few left. So she was lucky to get hers.
Getting the snow off the roof is not too bad, but then where do I put it? As you can see (above), shoveling my deck is not easy now that the snow is so high and more WILL be coming off the roof – where will I put it?
Richie (my cat) is very bad. You can see him in his favorite spot for hunting birds (in my first picture above). Yesterday while I was cleaning off the deck and shoveling out my woodpile, he caught a little chickadee. I hate that! I have set up three areas where the birds can eat so when Richie is outside the birds don’t have to eat near him, but they sometimes still get too close and he is very fast.
When I was uncovering the wood to lug some inside, Richie was climbing on it and fell head first into a deep pile of snow. It was hilarious. I should have had my camera – but I was working – because he was a sight with his butt sticking up out of the snow and his head buried. He managed to turn his head to the side and look up at me and I grabbed him and pulled him out. Pretty funny.
One day this overhang of thick ice will come crashing down off the roof. Yikes.
Related Articles
- Ice Dams – what to do (agordonins.wordpress.com)
- Timesunion.com: Roof rakes a commodity as snow piles up (timesunion.com)
- Roofers busy in snowy Northeast with leaky roofs (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
- Cop saves Vt. man trapped up to neck in snow pile (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
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New England's Narrow Road 
Looks like a familiar scene. You are lucky indeed to have a roof rake. I don’t have one and, for the first time ever, I’m wishing I did. Not so much because of snow depth, but because of the ice dam that’s built up. Yes, it’s pretty, but it’s getting a little scary out there!
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I’m so late getting back here, but I hope all is well up your way and the ice has melted a bit. If not, it will this week I think.
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Yikes. NH is a beautiful place to live. But I guess this is the price you pay to live there. That is some monster weather you are having. The last time the north suburbs of Detroit got hit with anything even close to this was about 12 years ago. Come to think of it, might have to go all the way back to the late 1970’s when 3 feet of snow fell in (as I recall) about 24-36 hours)…the period when Newsweek and the rest were proclaiming the onset of a “New Ice Age.” That ice overhang puts me in mind of what it must be like to be a minnow on the menu of a largemouth bass. Swim faster!
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The ice is off now! yay!! …It broke my landlady’s deck though.
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