Winter Excitement in The Great White North

Friday morning was eventful. I have already posted of the temperature (-32), but then it got very interesting. This will be a little difficult and somewhat lengthy to describe and narrate, but I think some of you will find the snow removal process interesting.

When it gets dark at night, I close the blinds in my den. I really don't need to because there is nothing much to see and nobody much to see this nothing. Still, I close them while I am puttering away in the evening, but before going to bed, I open them again. Believe it or not, I do it for the cat who may want to look out during the night. I don't even know if she does this in winter, but she does in summer when it's not stupid cold and the windows are open. 

Come morning, I get up when it is still dark, so I close the blinds again until it gets light. Then, I re-open them.

Are you scratching your noggin wondering why AC is telling you this?

Well, it is this. When I opened the blinds on Friday morning, I saw a big truck going by, and then another. I deduced that they were clearing up after Monday's big snowfall. I was right, for as I craned my neck to look up the street, I could see a big tractor blowing snow into a truck The other trucks in the line would take the place of the first truck once it was full of snow. That truck would then drive off to dump the snow somewhere.

Too bad. I was too late to get photos, but it eventuated that I would get another chance. In the meantime, here is one of a truck full of snow, which I took a bit later.

When Sue arose and came in for coffee, I described what I had seen, but as we looked out, behold there was more. This time, I would be able to witness the whole process. I will try to describe it, but bear with me, for it might be difficult to follow.

During the night, they had cleared our side of the street. Now they were doing the other. At this stage, they are not plowing the street itself but removing the snowbanks at the sides. These snowbanks had pretty much reduced the streets to one lane as cars had to pull over as close as they could to the sides to let each other pass.

I will try to outline the process in numbered form to help us both keep track.

1. What I had seen early in the morning was the first pass on the other side of the street. You can see that the far sides are sheared pretty straight before this second pass. Look by the driveway off to the

left, past the snow in the middle, to see how straight the side is.

2. You can also see (both above and below) that the plow had already begun the second pass by scraping another layer into the middle of the street. 

3. This gave the little tractor space to do a bit of cleanup by the driveways.

4. By the next photo, a plow has returned and pushed the pile from the middle of the road back to the edge but not right to the edge because there is still room for the little tractor to work. (I missed that pushing segment as there was much faffing around with phones and cameras, and that plow went by very quickly.

 

5. We then saw a a colourful plume approaching, highlighted by the rising sun behind.

6. As the next two photos show, the plume was from snow being blown into a truck. In the second photo, the spray was past us, so we were no longer catching the backlight from the sun.

7. We counted eight more trucks following the blower, all waiting for their loads. How many had already left the queue to dump snow wherever, I don't know. 

8. The neighbour across the street captured the blowing part on video and posted it on FB. Here is the link: https://www.facebook.com/594672456/videos/629049024998317/ . There is probably a way to embed it, but I don't know how that works, so I have just given you the link.

Wait! Maybe I have figured out how to embed. Let's see if it works.

From FB posts, I know that this process was being carried out concurrently in at least one other location in town and maybe more for all I know. It's a very expensive task because all of those trucks and probably even blowers and plows have to be contracted for the job. Yes, this gets paid for through property taxes.

As we were watching, we saw the little yellow tractor knocking over someone's marker and also depositing a boulder right in their driveway. As it turned out, it had also done that to us during the night. Our neighbour, the snow angel, contacted us and told us not to try to deal with it. He soon came over to take care of both the boulder and the sign.

This is what passes for winter excitement in The Great White North.