2014 February 7-8 Blizzard

Or to use a more media popular name "SNOWPACALYPSE 2014"

2014 Japan "Snowpacalypse" (click to enlarge)

Yep. We got about 50cm (1'7") or so of very wet heavy snow. Most of you back home think- Well, that's a fair amount, but not really a tragic event.

Panorama from the living room window (click to enlarge)
You can see the hydroponic strawberries on the left by the fence

Imagine if you had no plows. If you had no rocksalt and sand. Imagine that your streets were only 16' wide, with walls on both sides.

My Bench!!! and the bus stop

Even with daytime temps of 7-8 (mid 40s F) we have a lot of snow to melt. It truly was a snowpacalypse here.

Dog and goats at a loss of what to do

But the city's skiploader that doubles as the "plow" finally made it to our driveway at 1:00 on Monday, so I was able to get on the bike and go to work. Man, that was a lot of damage. If you don't get heavy snows for 20 years, the trees don't grow expecting it, and MAN, a lot of them just shattered! About 10-20 meters up, they just shattered and the tops fell off. So our mountains look like... well, cedar plantations with a lot of toothpicks sticking up here and there. (You have to realize, there are thousands to tens of thousands of trees on each mountain, if one percent of them shattered, that is a lot of trees, but still only one percent)

Concrete power poles are not supposed to have a visible bend in them....

Just how heavy was that snow?!?!

Well, it is all over but the cleanup, and I got a lot of cheap wood. (I am a firm believer in burning cedar in my woodstove). The neighbors laugh at me, but my house is a comfortable 20-25 degrees, so I laugh back at them, trying to split knotty hardwoods while 15" cedar splits when I just grip my maul and look at it sternly.
And it dries faster than their hardwoods, so I get more heat value then they do.

Snow Hangover

Yesterday, a storm passed though, dumping about 30-45cm of wet yet fluffy snow over the area. Since it only snows like that once every few years, the city has never bought snow moving equipment. So this morning our road is a mish-mashed icy bumpcicle of re-frozen slush. It will probably melt by the afternoon. But until it does, I am declaring a snow-hangover and not sending the kids to school!

And to celebrate the snow hangover, we are having an upscale version of the usual rice-browns I make.

Ingredients:

• Cooked Rice (one small bowl per person)(short-grained sticky rice is preferred)
• Eggs (one per person)
• Soy sauce (1tsp/person)
• Cheese
• Onion (one small)
• Bacon (one strip/person)

1. Caramelize the onions over low heat in some butter.
2. Cook the bacon until crispy.
3. Mix the rice, eggs, and soy sauce in a medium bowl.
4. Drop one serving of the egg/rice mixture into the frying pan at medium heat. Sprinkle some cheese over it.
5. When it looks dry around the edges, flip it.
6. Cautiously check to make sure the cheese is golden brown, and transfer to the plate. 
7. Smother with caramelized onion, some bacon bits, and more cheese. Top with some mayo and ketchup.

My "Rice-Browns"

Tonsils and Snowmen- Two Great (big) Things...

Tonsils and Snowmen, Two Great (Big) Things That Go Great Together...

The doctor looked in her mouth and said "Oh my goodness! Those are huge!" 

Not the thing you usually expect a doctor to say, but pretty accurate...

We finally got some snow, so the youngest and I made snowmen after dropping the older ones at school.

Only two more days to the Seed Exchange Party! The local area information magazine is planning to come and do a piece on it! 

Snow, and lots of it!

In the the first four years we lived on the side of the mountain, it snowed maybe 10 times. I think the deepest was about 5 cm.

This year- no wait, this February it has snowed 8 times, for a total of about 50cm! (Of course it all melted already).


But it was enough for the kids and I to go out and make a "Kamakura." Pile up snow and pack it down, until it is as high as you can make it. Then just dig it out with a garden shovel.

Good fun.