Preparing for winter

We had a day of rain predicted today (Thursday), so yesterday Don and I did a lot of battening down. But it wasn't just battening down for rain; it was the precursor of battening down for winter. In fact, winter has been more on our minds lately after Don "called fall" this week.

Let me back up a bit to explain why this is important to us. In fact, let me back up all the way to  2003, when we first moved from southwest Oregon to north Idaho. We moved in June, which meant the weather was lovely. We had about five months, perhaps more, to anticipate what lay in store for us over the cold months. And here's the thing: Depending on whom we talked to, the winters were either "not bad" or they were horrible. Which was it?

Keep in mind we were far more rural in Idaho than we were in Oregon. With two small children (five and seven at the time), we knew we didn't want to risk their health or safety by not being ready for what, conceivably, could be a hard winter.

So we made a decision: By October, we would be prepared to be snowed in for three months. This meant we would have enough people food, pet food, and livestock food so we wouldn't have to go to the store for three months, and enough firewood to stay warm. Could we do it?

Yes we could, and we did. And boy, did it pay off.

The first couple of winters were fine. We got snow, sure; but it wasn't much and it wasn't bad. Were we overreacting by our "snowed in for three months" rule?

And then the winters of 2005/6 and 2006/7 hit like a ton of bricks. During the former, we had tons of snow. During the latter we had tons of snow and high winds. Combined, they left something of a psychic scar that made us never underestimate the power of winter. Ever.

The winter of 2006/7, we probably got five feet of snow (in areas north of us, apparently it was upwards of 12 feet). While this may sound like no big deal for battle-hardened Minnesotans, the two-mile dirt road we lived on at the time was not county-maintained, so it was up to the neighbors to keep it open. The combined efforts of everyone's mishmash of tractors, pickup truck plow blades, and (at times) snow shovels worked – kinda – but it was constant and brutal work and wasn't always effective.

While we weren't snowed in for three months, we got close. That second harsh winter – when heavy snowfall combined with high winds meant our road was closed under incredibly deep drifts – our remote neighborhood fell into a pattern: Storms came at about weekly intervals that, for whatever reason, always came in on weekends. It took about six days to clear the road (no exaggeration). If a storm came in over the weekend, then we were able to get the road opened by about Friday. Everyone would pour out of their homes, dash into town for mail, groceries, and errands, and make it home just in time for another blizzard to close the road.

This happened over and over and over and OVER. Those who worked away from home had to make endless excuses to their bosses. Many had no option except to work remotely. One person who normally commuted to a city job an hour away had to stay with a coworker for a few weeks because otherwise she would miss too much work. One family whose kids attended the public schools simply couldn't make it out.

Keep in mind these winter conditions also meant commercial roads were also impacted. Sections of a major highway were drifted shut numerous times that winter, so trucks were unable to deliver food, mail, hardware, or other items. Several times that winter, both restaurants and the grocery store in town were closed, either because of a lack of supplies or because employees couldn't make it to work. The local school district took a lot of snow days during those two winters.

Meanwhile our 300-foot driveway drifted shut so many times that after a few storms, there was literally nowhere else to put snow. The smartest thing we did was park our car at the end of the driveway before one of the blizzards. For the next two months, we snowshoed to and from the car, transporting the children (along with mail and groceries) on a hay sled. Had we not parked the car at the end of the driveway, we – literally – would not have been able to leave the house for eight weeks running. As it was, we had to shovel the car out after each blizzard.

I remember after one particularly nasty storm, a heroic neighbor who lived about a mile away – and who was a heavy equipment operator – got busy trying to clear one heavily drifted quarter-mile section of road not far from our house. He didn't own a snow blower, so he used his good-sized bulldozer to push snow. It took him EIGHT HOURS of hard work to get that one quarter-mile section of road opened, and by the end of it we had nine-foot canyon walls of snow along the sides. (To this day, I regret I never took a photo – it was in the days before I owned a pocket camera.)

For these reasons, we've never relaxed our "snowed in for three months" rule when it comes to approaching winter. In Idaho, you just never know.

Anyway, this is a long explanation of why we're starting to think about getting ready. Will it be an abnormally harsh winter? Don has never "called fall" this early before.

Don read something interesting a couple weeks ago about how global weather patterns are being impacted by one of the greatest natural disasters no one has ever heard of: The Hunga Tonga underwater volcanic explosion that occurred in January of 2022.

This event was spectacularly enormous, "bigger than any other modern volcanic eruption, even bigger than Mount Pinatubo and possibly Krakatoa," according to this article. "The erupting lava instantly vaporized fantastic, unimaginable amounts of sea water, which billowed into the atmosphere, changing the water composition of Earth’s atmosphere and heating it up for years. In just a few days, the superheated water from the Hunga Tonga eruption blanketed the entire globe, pole to pole, East to West. ... Current estimates [for the amount of water blasted into the stratosphere] are three times higher than initially thought: scientists now believe it was closer to 150,000 metric tons, or approximately 40 trillion gallons of superheated water instantly injected into the atmosphere." Scientists expect the effects to persist globally for a long, long time.

So yeah, a hard winter is not outside the realm of possibility.

Therefore yesterday was a day of miscellaneous battening-down chores. It started with a long-overdue repair of a couple of flat tires. Not even flat; utterly destroyed. One tire was on a small trailer we haven't been able to use for some time; and the other, crucially, was on our log splitter.

We have a bunch of wood to split...

...including rounds far too large to use our manual splitter.

Don was able to get the new tire installed. Now the splitter can be moved to where we need it to go.

Time's a-wastin'. We have to get the winter's firewood put up.

Other miscellaneous chores included re-stacking and re-tarping a pile of lumber...

...scrubbing out and refilling the cow's water tank...

...and moving the last of the older round bales into the barn. (The newer hay bales are stacked and tarped in the front driveway; we'll be moving them to the back, nearer the barn, before the snow flies.)

We still have lots to do before winter, including (hopefully) building an awning on the back of the barn to offer more shelter for the livestock this winter.

If it will be a hard winter, we want to be ready for it.

Downpour and fill-up

We missed most of the dramatic bomb cyclone + atmospheric river that blasted the west coast over the last week. These storms did a massive amount of damage over the region, including multiple feet of snow in the mountains that snarled traffic and caused horrific accidents.

We can usually expect the residuals of such storms to hit our inland area within a day or two. To that end, we battened down the hatches and prepared to hunker down for the duration. The rain moved in late Friday night, after I'd gone to bed. We had hopes the newly installed roof-runoff water tank, then about one-third full, would top off. Don (who comes to bed later than I do) planned to let the gutters drain the initial roof runoff (to clean everything) for about half an hour, then divert the runoff into the tank before he came to bed.

Thankfully we had no wind, but it rained and rained and RAINED and rained the blessed night long. Early Saturday morning before dawn, I laid in bed, listening to the pounding on the roof, and thanked God the livestock were snug and dry in the barn.

Or so I thought. When I went out to feed them, this is what I saw:

Well, no one ever said cows were bred for brains, as I always say. To be fair, by the mess left in the barn, it seemed their jaunt into the weather was fairly recent and they had, in fact, spent the night under cover.

I cleaned the barn, and while I dumped the night's leavings on the compost pile, the animals moved back inside.

Once the feeders were full, they all settled in to enjoy breakfast.

Even before attending to the cows, just after I got up (around 5 am, so still dark), I took a flashlight and peered over the edge of the balcony, where the outflow pipes from the water tank were just visible. I saw water flowing out of the pipes, which could mean only one thing: The tank was full to overflowing. Accordingly, I flipped the levers to divert the roof runoff from the tank back to the downspouts. Later I photographed the edges of the overflow pipes, no longer running:

This was the first opportunity to test these outflow pipes, and they worked beautifully.

Later, I lifted the floor hatch on the deck and unscrewed the access hatch on top of the tank. Sure enough, brim-full. Those are the outflow pipes, at the top-right.

Fifteen hundred gallons of water!

Even better, this is a passive and inexhaustible source. This much water will get us through long dry spells, providing both household and livestock water. And every time it rains, we can top off the tank.

Now that the tank is full, we'll add chlorine to keep it pure. We still have no plans to drink it directly from the tank until filtered (or boiled), but the peace of mind that comes with abundant water is impossible to underscore.

Rain and more rain

Yesterday (Tuesday) was gloriously beautiful: sunny, warm, high of 72F. We actually put the hanging screen door back on.

But all that changed today and rain moved in. Lots of rain.

Yesterday evening, while out walking Darcy, we noticed some fires burning as people took care of slash piles ahead of the weather. It was a good time to burn.

The sky remained mostly clear until early evening, when some clouds started moving in.

There even seemed like some cloud-to-cloud virga.

Late evening brought the sight of the slash fire glowing brightly.

The rain moved in overnight, and by this morning it was gray and wet. Rainfall has ranged from light to heavy, and it's nowhere near done.

But that's okay. Everything's getting a thorough watering. No complaints.

In like a lion

Whew. March has come in like a lion! Let me catch you up on the last few days.

We knew we were going to be hit by a storm on Thursday with high wind and heavy rain. We were used to high winds in our last home, but it's far rarer here in our current place. The weather report said power outages were "expected." Accordingly, we battened down the hatches.

This meant catching up on laundry...

...bringing in the high-profile cushions from the porch rockers (except, crucially, the seat cushions with I naively thought would be fine) ...

...and filling water containers. We always keep stored water, of course, but I filled up two 50-gallon barrels in the barn (we drain them during the colder months lest they freeze) and topped off some water pitchers in the kitchen.

Don, meanwhile, is in the process of building a shed next to the barn. He frantically worked to get the roof on before the storm came in. He got as far as getting the plywood on top and the tar paper nailed down, but that was it.

The storm rolled in just at the start of my workweek, when I'm literally glued to the computer for three days of 11-hour days. For this reason, when we first moved into this house and realized how unreliable the power grid is during any adverse weather, we have full battery and internet backups for my laptop.

The rain held off, but the wind picked up, stronger and stronger. Sure enough, about 10:30 am Thursday morning – long before the wind even reached its peak – the power went out. I plugged my computer into the battery backup...

...and connected into the wireless hotspot (since our regular internet was down).

My workday proceeded fairly normally, just doing my online job, but Don and Older Daughter were trapped in the house and frankly bored. Don couldn't do any of the outdoor projects he wanted, and Older Daughter couldn't get any work done on the shop tools (since they're electric). They got a lot of reading done.

The wind was the highest we've ever seen here. This little outdoor carpet on the back porch kept getting blown off – literally – so I finally anchored it with a bag of dog food.

We have a small table on wheels on the front porch, and we forgot to lock the wheels. A gust sent the table spinning into the rails...

...and flung both a snow shovel (that had been leaning against it) and a thermometer (that had been resting on top it) to the ground below.

And it ripped off all – all! – of the tar paper Don had stapled to the roof of the new shed off. We saw pieces everywhere.

Around 3 pm, the rain moved in, and it grew so dark outside that it seemed like evening. This is how dark it was inside the house.

When evening came, we lit lamps.

We wiled away the evening reading books and talking. Because it was chilly on her side of the house, Older Daughter opened the connecting door and let Frumpkin (her cat) wander around.

The next morning, concerned that the refrigerator was getting too warm, Don used our Bluetti to power the fridge for an hour or so, just long enough to bring the inside temp back to safe levels.

He did the same thing to the chest freezer.

Then he hauled out the old military generator we bought from a neighbor a few years ago, and recharged the Bluetti. It wasn't really that the Bluetti needed recharging so much as Don wanted to see how well it worked to recharge the battery pack. (Short answer: very well.) We've bought new generators over the years, but nothing beats this old workhorse. As with any power outage, it's a good opportunity to test our preps.

The yard was soggy with the previous day's downpour, and littered with branches.

The wind had ripped the netting off the blueberries and peach trees, and toppled the cattle panels. We got out there and pulled everything back together.

As the day progressed, since Don was listening to the scanner, we learned power had been restored everywhere except around our place. Sure enough, late Friday afternoon we saw the power company's vehicles driving around the neighborhood, as if looking for the source of the disruption. (For the record, these workers are among the greatest unsung heroes of our society.)

Thanks to their dedicated efforts, power was restored around 2:30 on Friday. Suddenly life was back to normal.

For a couple hours, anyway. Late in the afternoon, a sudden microburst of wind hit us so hard, the house literally shook. It picked up one of the porch rockers and flung it across the deck.

The seat cushion was blown to the ground below. Note to self: Next time, remove all the seat cushions when it's windy.

Things were calm for about 24 hours. In the interim, we made sure our battery packs were re-charged.

Then last night, after dark, a sudden burst of rain started dumping on us. The temperature dropped and the rain turned to snow, blowing sideways in the wind. Within half an hour, three inches of snow had been plastered everywhere.

This morning revealed another winter landscape, and the temperature had dropped to 22F.

I should add that none of this weather drama – outside of Thursday's wind and rain – was predicted. Go figure.

So yeah, March is coming in like a lion. But hey, at least we're not in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, where people are experiencing a blizzard described as "as bad as it gets."