So far Winter 2024-2025 has been very quiet, in fact December and most of January were much milder than usual even by East Coast Standards. I've complained here many times about late starts to winter when we don't see snow until January, this year our first sizeable storm didn't arrive until today!

We've had some cold weather over the past two weeks, but it was still pockmarked by warm spells and nothing other than a dusting of snow. That is finally set to change this week. Weather forecasters have issued a Blizzard Warning with upwards of 40cm snow and 80kph winds gusting to over 100kph Sunday overnight into Monday morning.

I spent Sunday afternoon helping a couple of buddies get their Snowblowers running ahead of the storm, then reorganizing our vehicles and trailer to make cleanup easier. I even brought the Argo tracks inside so they would be clean and dry, ready to install at anytime instead of being frozen and full of snow.

As forecast snowfall started around 9pm and winds picked up around 1am.

Monday morning Boomer was crying to get out so he spent a few minutes on his catio before reluctantly calling it quits.

By mid afternoon winds were still very high but snowfall stopped so I headed outside to begin our cleanup. According to the news we received 41cm of snow with this storm as measured at YYT. This is a great albeit late start to the winter season.

Shovelling out our Basement Door is always the worst part of this cleanup!

Our Honda 9/28 Blower which I serviced earlier this fall went straight to work clearing bucket high wind drifted snow along most of the length our 80' driveway. Full bucket passes only for these epic machines!

Once the bulk of the driveway was clear, I fired up and let our vehicles run for 30-45 minutes. I do this to thaw them out and melt all the snow in the engine compartment which will ensure the belts are good and dry before being parked up again.

It was quite chilly today with mercury sitting at around -10ºC and wind-chill closer to -22ºC in these intense winds.

Basement Door all cleaned out! It's a hard but very important task as this is the only direct route outside from the basement in the event of an emergency.

While I cleaned up the driveway Sandra was hard at work making an epic post storm dinner of Chicken with all the usual vegetables and gravy. A great end to a fun day!

Cheers, MIKE

Copyright © 2025 Michael Smith