Jan 9th

The cold weather has broken, at least for a bit. It has been below zero both day and night for the last three or more days. We ended up with close to 18 inches of snow on the ground, and a big pile of snow on the roof.

The weather of course was having a serious effect on the wildlife. The rabbits were helpless in 18 inches of powder that would in no way support even their weight. As near as I could tell, they were holing up under whatever Sage they had been sitting in at the time.

A sharpie took a stand on the solar pool heater for a while.

I had dug paths around the house and out buildings so that I could feed the critters. The Jacks soon discovered them and some really funny foot races between them and the dogs were taking place every time I let them out to pee. Even so Josie managed to catch another one of the Bunnies that live around the place. Oh well, added to the food supply.
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A herd of about 100 Antelope came in and rested down on the creek for several hours. They eventually moved off up the hill towards the road. Hopefully the weather will break soon. They are having a pretty hard time. I doubt that all of the yearlings will make it. I saw one while I was plowing that was pretty weak.

 I had dug out the snow plow for the Quad and began digging out as much as I could. It was pretty tough work, but the snow was so dry that it plowed out pretty well. Then it began snowing again while warming a bit, and we had some "snain" Not quite snow and not really rain. I worried that if it continued all that fluffy powder would turn into a frozen mess that we wouldn't be able to navigate at all. I dug out my stuff and started trying again to punch a hole in the surface so that it would not be too much to plow. Somehow in my travels the last time, I managed to punch a "nail"? hole in one of my front tires. I used a tubeless repair kit that was at least 10 years old. It worked and I was able to keep air in it. The visibility was so flat that I plowed the road mostly by Braille. I absolutely could not see where the road was. I wandered off at least twice, but eventually managed to do a semblance of a plowing  job on the road out. Then as feared it began to start warming up, with a little bit of rain.

I began to worry about the snow on the roof, but really had no way to get it off. I tried a rake and rope setup but it was ineffectual. With the roof being metal, I wasn't worrying about leaks, only the weight. It stayed above freezing all night and when I got up this morning it had fallen off. Now the worry was that the snow melt would seep in under the walls. We had problems with that and flood waters in prior years, and I had tried to seal the area where the walls were cemented to the floor. No way to tell if it was water proof until it was too late.

 So the only recourse was to start digging. It was really heavy and I was glad to have it off the roof. I took my time and got it cleared away from the house. Now we will see what happens when the rest of it begins to melt. We are supposed to have a couple more days of warm, then it is supposed to start snowing again.

Today is Karen's and my wedding anniversary. We married 52 years ago.