We've got snow! I measured six inches at 9 a.m., and we've had another three or four since then, looks like. It snowed steadily all morning, but now it has stopped, but we're in for some bitterly cold weather - with wind - tonight. Perhaps another night of power outages. There are lots of outages all over the region already, and once the wind begins to blow, it will likely got worse.
     As for traveling - it's been hairy. Here's a report from Shelly Walker at the lower end of West Shore Road: 
    This morning I got up early (6 AM) because I needed to drive to Montpelier to get my winter tires on (Sick joke from Mother Mature!).  Fortunately, I had parked the car in the garage.  It was quite slippery getting out of the driveway and up to Route 2.  Below Marshfield Dam, there was a tanker truck in two pieces.  Looked like it might have jackknifed.  The tank was upside down on the right side of Route 2 and the cab was on its wheels on the left.  There were all kinds of emergency vehicles.  The tanker must have had something non-toxic (maybe milk) in it as they were letting traffic go by.  Coming back home about 12:30 PM traffic was stopped in both directions.  I turned around, went to Cabot, then came over Cabot Plains.  The road was quite slippery.  At Davis' camp [on West Shore Rd] there was a pickup truck at a 45 degree angle off the driveway.  There was another truck stopped; they were waiting for a tow truck.

      Thanks to Shelly for that report. The highway past the dam has always been hard to manage. It's  much better since it was widened, but there isn't much they could do about the incline, so drivers still get hung up there. We're glad Shelly made it to Montpelier and back without too much difficulty.
     Diane Rossi called this morning saying there was what appeared to be a young loon thrashing about in the water - it seemed to her to be perhaps trying to take off. We think there is plenty of open water in the middle of the pond for it to use, even though there is ice around the edges. Shelly spotted a couple of Mergansers in front of her house this afternoon, but she said they had no trouble taking off before she had a chance to get a picture. Her cove is frozen over. We hope all the waterfowl take off before the deep cold sets in tonight - otherwise, they may be literally frozen in place. Sadly, it happens; but usually they get out of here in plenty of time.
    I just took a couple of fresh pictures of the snow around our house - the trees in the back are even more laden with snow than two days ago. If there was melting going on yesterday, we didn't benefit from any of it. As you can see, the snow is even denser in the trees after today's storm. Fred was out clearing the driveway twice today - I think that will do it for today, at least. There may be some drifts to clear tomorrow

if the wind kicks in, as predicted.
    It's really pretty - looks more like Christmas than not-quite Thanksgiving. I was saying this morning I don't remember this much snow this early. But when I go back in my picture files, I can find all sorts of pictures just like these! Not as unusual as one might think. The last photo was taken on October 26, 2003. Not quite as much as we have this storm, but weeks earlier, too!

October 26, 2003