If anybody is looking for an idea for a Christmas gift for me, I’m a size large snowblower.

The National Weather Service was predicting 8-12″ of snow for Rapid City on Saturday. There’s no way we’re going to get that much, I thought. Well, I was right.
We ended up with 17″ of snow.
And that, my friends, was a record for the biggest daily snowfall in November in Rapid City history. Way to overachieve! We ended up with 26″ for the month, which makes it the snowiest November on record.
Sure was pretty when it was coming down…

But once those winds started gusting to 60 mph, the snow started piling up into waist-high drifts. Which Tara and I had to tackle with shovels, while everybody else in the neighborhood had snowblowers.



This was our street, before the plow came through Sunday afternoon. Hard to believe there’s a road there!

Later on, after a few vehicles with AWD were able to navigate down the hill:


I have long been a snow lover. All my friends know this. The climate in Rapid City was actually one of the key motivating factors in moving here. After the blizzard, my friend Heidi asked, “Still loving the snow?” This is similar to comments I receive every time I post photos of snowstorms. People tend to think that I am suddenly sick and tired of snow and ready to move back to Portland.
Here’s the deal. Let’s say you love pizza, and one day, go out to dinner at an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet. You end up consuming 17″ worth of pizza. Are you going to be “over” pizza forever afterward because you ate too much?
Of course not.
Snow is my pizza, only minus the pepperoni.
Is it a pain in the ass to shovel? Yes. Are the roads treacherous to drive on for days afterward? You betcha. Is my car still struggling to get up the hill leading to my house, three days after the blizzard, even when it’s sunny and pushing 50 degrees? Yep.
But there’s just something about it that I love. Maybe I’m a little nuts. But I figure, it’s nothing that a snowblower and an AWD vehicle can’t handle. Both of which are very much in my future.
And I know for a fact that my blogging friend Ron can relate.

So, let it snow!




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