Hazy Shade of Winter: Oklahoma 2011, Part II

So, Kenna and I are still stuck at home and we have our third snow day in a row.  I took this picture in my yard of the snow that has blown around--I thought it looked cool:

Today I tackled the driveway since the high winds died down.  It is still very cold, around 0 with the wind chill, but I managed to shovel/sweep a path from the garage door to the street:

The layer underneath is ice with a little snow stuck to the top.  I tried to shovel early so that I could put a layer of salt down while the sun was out and now I can see patches of pavement.

The official measurement here was 8 inches and thankfully, the wind blew a lot of it off of the driveway yesterday, so I had between 6 and 2 inches to shovel. 

The streets still haven't been plowed and even though they don't look too bad in the photos below, they are very slick:

So, we have another day off of school because most of the roads are not safe to drive on.  Of course, there are idiots who try to get out there in their four wheel drive trucks even though they don't need to be anywhere.  I cannot tell you how many of those morons I have seen sliding around just in my neighborhood.  Stay off of the roads so that they can be plowed and so that you don't get stuck or have an accident!

I really hope that we're able to get out of here by Friday--I'm getting a little sick of being at home.

Hazy Shade of Winter: Oklahoma 2011

Well, gentle readers, it seems that even moving to Oklahoma did not keep us from having to deal with major winter weather.  There is far less snow here than we usually had in New York, but under the snow is a layer of the Midwest's winter specialty: ice.  Also, it is extremely windy, so we have very high snow drifts.  This is Kenna this morning, ready to go out for the first time:

She refused to go any further than this:

I made her try again, but she was right back at the door one second later:

I finally got her to go out in the front yard, but she wasn't happy about it.  She hates snow blowing in her face and the winds are very high, so the poor thing was having trouble even walking around outside.  This is our front yard--the street is out there somewhere :

The garage--thankfully, the snow has been blowing in the opposite direction.  I was worried that I would have a wall of snow in front of the garage door, but it isn't too bad.

The driveway that I have to unearth (unsnow?) at some point:

The house:

The drifts are in the back yard, for the most part, and they keep getting taller:

On the right side, that little handle belongs to my Radio Flyer red wagon.  The rest of it is buried for now:

It looks like the snow is over at this point, although the wind is still blowing like crazy.  I haven't seen any snow plows yet; I imagine that they have enough on their hands just trying to keep the main roads clear of blowing snow and it's difficult to treat the layer of ice beneath with winds like this.  The sun is finally out, but it's not even 20 degrees (without wind chill), so I doubt the sun will do much to help the situation.

I really hope I don't have to dig myself out and drive to campus tomorrow--I tried to start shoveling the driveway, but that is useless because the snow just blows right back.  So, I can't really effectively shovel until the wind stops blowing, which won't be until the middle of the night and I would rather not be out there at 5 a.m. shoveling so that I can teach my 8:00 class.  We shall see...