Winter is Back

I knew the warm weather we enjoyed in most of January couldn't last. I was even looking forward to the rain again, but I did not anticipate a huge snow storm. The weather predicted snow for us, but I didn't get my hopes up. When I woke up Thursday morning it was raining.

By the time I left for work there was a little snow on the ground. I took a picture because I thought this was all the snow we would see from this storm. I was definitely wrong.

This is the road back home from work, while I only live about 2 miles from work there is quite an elevation change. The roads were a bit scary even in 4 wheel drive. I left work as soon as I got there since they were going to wait and see if the conditions would improve before having everyone stay at work. I didn't want to risk getting stuck up there so I headed home.

The snow did not let up, it kept snowing harder. This picture is after about 4 or 5 hours of steady snow. It was snowing so hard that I didn't even take Allyson out to play in it. Also the heavy snow was causing trees and branches to snap all over the place. We could hear something snap about every 5 minutes. We had a bunch of branches come down in our yard but it wasn't too bad, at first.

Did I mention our power had gone out? We were so happy when it came on, but it was short lived. I was just checking the weather and road conditions when I heard a crash and the power was out again. We had only enjoyed having our power back for 10 minutes. We looked outside and saw the power lines down right outside our house. Not good news. This picture is of the downed line, but it is pretty hard to see.

That afternoon when I called PG&E to check on the status of our repair I heard the lovely words "please be prepared to be out of power for an extended period of time". They weren't kidding. The power has now had been out for about 2 1/2 days. Since we enjoy having running water and Allyson's room doesn't stay warm without an extra heater we decided to stay at my parents.

Allyson is loving the arrangement, and we can't complain about it either. I love the snow, but I don't love trees falling and down power lines. Thankfully PG&E was out looking at our lines tonight, so at least someone has "assessed the damage". So maybe our extended period of time is almost over.

Allyson is getting in some good cuddle time with Grandma who is recovering from her foot surgery. I know, we are so nice to invite ourselves over during her recovery. But we all know that Allyson is the cure to everything (pain meds do help too).

UPDATE: Our power came back on Sunday afternoon (yay!). We stayed one more night at my parents and Monday Steve spent half the day getting the house warm enough for us to come home.