A Winter Storm

We've spent much of this last week digging ourselves out from an incredible snowstorm. Anything I had previously considered a winter storm pales in comparison.  It snowed non-stop from Tuesday night to Friday morning, with the bulk of the snow falling on Thursday. We had about three feet of snow dump on us.

Along with the mass amounts of snow came power outages.  Many, many power outages.  At our house the outages were reasonable; I think the longest was five hours.  But many people in our town had no power for 24 hours, or even up to 72 hours in some areas. The snow stopped falling several days ago, but the power outages have continued as trees still heavily laden with snow topple onto power lines.

And it was cold!  In the couple days following the snowfall it reached -38C on more than one occasion. You can imagine that a house left without heat in -30 for 24 hours or more is not a good situation.  When the power was out the grocery store closed, and neither of our two gas stations could pump gas.  We, as a region, quickly slipped into survival mode, and our community facebook group was flooded with offers of warm shelter and food (by those fortunate people with either wood heat or generators).

My grandparents live just down the street from us, but their half of town was among those without power for 24 hours.  So we enjoyed their company and the kids got lots of snuggles and stories while we waited for their power to come back on and then for their house to heat up.  (Without heat the inside of their house dropped to just three degrees.)

I was amazing to see our little village band together as a community.  We are so blessed to live here.  Although the weather is cold, the community is indeed warm.