This Winter, the Joke is on Me.

This is a recent snow pack report from NOAA. It reinforces what I already knew. We have a boatload of snow out there. I am located in the red zone dipping into southern Maine. According to this chart, I am either in the 25 to 30 inch zone or the 30 to 35 inch zone. My own crude measurements across the road indicate both are on the low side.

At this point in Mary's Woods, the nature preserve across the road, the yardstick measurements I took more often than not needed a stick longer than a yard. Okay, so we will just say conservatively, there's a solid 30 inches of snow on the ground. This pack is also what has accumulated since the ground finding thaw of a month ago.

So with lots of snow, I have had the snow blower out quite a bit this winter. I have used up two impeller belts, one traction belt, and run over 12 gallons of gas through the beast of a 13 HP Tecumseh engine. Then just today, as a sort of garnish on top of the whacked winter I have been having, I managed to find the sump pump hose with the damn thing. Wound that hose up nice and tight inside the auger.

Oblivious at first, I figured out something was wrong when the blower began to buck and moan. Made an awful sound. Seems it only takes about 2 seconds for 20 feet of sump hose to wind up into a snow blower.

This pile of previously almost new hose took me an hour to extricate from the auger of the Ariens. I thought changing a belt sucked. Spend some time unwinding and unjamming cold frozen sump hose in 10'F weather and changing belts in the garage seems like a luxury now.

With this most recent screw up on my part, I have now thrown in the towel. I have decided that this winter I have been targeted by Ma Nature as one of her go to flounders. This winter has been one comedic event after another. 27 years as the man of the house and I do not remember any period so chock full of boneheaded plays foisted upon myself by myself as this winter. I am hopeful that the events of this winter represent an anomaly and not the beginning of a trend.