It's been a busy morning for us. The wind has been howling all day and it's been snowing pretty hard. It's beginning to let up now and the temperature has been rising. It was in the teens this morning, but around noon began to head up and is now at 31. We are supposed to get freezing rain and sleet, and it looks as if that will happen. The picture on the right was taken a few minutes ago - pretty solidly frozen over at the upper part of the lake.

I measured just over two inches of new snow at 9 a.m., but I'm sure we have much more than than at the stake now. I'm going out to check since it seems it may be the end of the snow and I'd like to know how much there is before the rain takes it down.

First thing this morning Fred noticed our mailboxes (there are three on one post at the end of our driveway, Henretta's and Jamie's and ours) were on the ground and the post was tipping. Nothing seemed broken except one of the side braces, so we though someone must have accidentally hit the post. Later, a neighbor from over on the Bayley Hazen Road called to say his wife went into a slide around 5 a.m. this as she was headed for work and hit it. We were able to get it put back up with no problem; we don't know the condition of her car, though. The roads were pretty bad this morning and the plow hadn't been through at that hour, I expect. We appreciated the call and our neighbor's offer to help make repairs, though.

Fred was then off to snow blow so the mailman could reach the boxes, and right after lunch he went back out and has spent most of the afternoon clearing away the snow. It's good to get it out of the way before the rain comes and makes it too heavy to clear easily.

I'm listening to the scanner and the road crews are very busy. Trees down, vehicles off the roads, but they are getting it cleared in good time. They're saying the roads are beginning to improve, and that's good news.

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I went out a few minutes ago to measure the snow again. I slogged through about a foot of snow up to my snow board only to find there was only about an inch of new snow since 9 a.m., and that covered only about half of the board. At the stake there was a strong 7 inches, though. They say this whole thing isn't an "exact science" and that's for sure. I guess I could measure a drift or two, then what's on the ground in a few places and take an average . . .anyway, the cylinder is out there to catch whatever snow,rain or sleet there may be, so perhaps tomorrow will give a better reading.

It was a mistake not leaving the cylinder there this morning as it would have caught some of the snow, perhaps instead of it blowing away. I'm not sure why I made that decision. Perhaps it had something to do with getting the mailboxes back in place. And that was all for naught - there was no mail delivery today! I guess Tim figured it wasn't worth the hassle and maybe not all the roads were plowed or maybe they were filling in so fast the plows couldn't keep ahead. Anyway, that doesn't happen very often. It's ok, though. I'll go on line to read the newspaper; there probably wasn't much else anyway. We wonder when cost cutting will bring about mail deliveries only two or three times a week? I've heard rumors about that . . .