How deep is the snow Phil??????
 

Kept thinking about you while watching the news.........

We had 46 to 48 CM last weekend.......first good one this year.....been bitter cold since....... using the drill press today I had to use a propane torch to heat up the chuck as it was too stiff to turn by hand..... it was -18C but Sunny.

Tomorrow we blow before the warm spell on Wednesday with freezing rain and wet snow..... them will freeze hard again......

I would give a testicles for two weeks in Australia....... not one of mine ...the deep fried ones in the freezer......Stay warm and healthy

cheers

Two inch or four feet
 

Hi Bob

We were on the edge of the worst of the snow. But we had blizzard conditions for much of the day with heavy snow, very cold temperatures but it was wind 20 to 40 mph all day. The result was drifting some places 2 inches and others 4 foot drifts.

Driveway was bare ice in places from the last storm and then big drifts, which made plowing really interesting.

But there is good news we got mud and black fly seasons to look forward to.

This morning it is -11F here.

Cheers Phil

Bob, I was half expecting you to write that the firebox named Lucifer had taken on a human form and come to help hold your workpiece there.

And Phil, there are four distinct seasons in Eastern North America - hot and humid, dry and cool, bitterly cold and snowy, and warm and pleasant. Australia has one - unconscionably hot. If you are going to trade continents, the little archipelago to the right of Oz was the only place in the world my father said he'd consider moving to. But those clever Kiwis have residency rules to keep out the testicle-less masses of the world.

Simple efficency test for Lucifer....
 

You start the day at -18C by noon you have reached +6 or 7 C ......by late afternoon it may actually reach 60 F and a few mosquitoes have thawed out and flying around......... then you know that Lucifer is humming!!!!!

The sad part is that by the time you are comfortable its diner time and we shut down for the day.

Still better than working in the snow, loosing nuts and screws in the snow, with numb frozen fingers.

All in all its not too bad!!!!! and it gets you out of the house.

Insurance company band wood furnace in garage
 

Hi Bob

The insurance companies around here started banning wood (solid fuel) furnaces in garages. Last winter in mid winter they wanted me to remove the chimney from my old shop/garage because I have a large rated Canadian built wood fired hot air furnace.

Not a real problem as it had not been used since 2004 when I built the new shop which has propane heat.

What I get a kick out of is this is an insurance company from Maine I'm sure of course that there are no wood stoves in garages in Maine.

Wonder what their reaction would have been had said you want me to disconnect Lucifer?

I find centigrade temperatures depressing, don't mind it the summer but in the winter it is the " - " negative numbers all winter long. With the Fahrenheit scale you only get negative numbers every now and then. Heck we have had entire winters when it never got negative.

Cheers Phil

Thanks to my Mexico vacation, my short bout with covid, and my longer bout with the followup pneumonia, I did not clear snow from mid December until a week ago. Still week from the latter, it was brutal. The tractor could not move unless you were at least skimming the top of the snow. My tractor is an old 1948 Oliver 88 with a decent allied bucket, and does stellar work with the exception that it does not have power steering. Spent a few hours so that I could navigate again, and even got the snowblower going, which I rarely use as I have a tractor, and a snowblower is like using an artist brush on a barn. But it lets the wife participate.

So finally caught up so I could make it to the shop, see patches of black earth, get firewood form the woodpiles out back, and we get a blizzard last night. Roads are closed, as of now we don't go to work until noon, but that will change yet, And I have yet to see what the 80 km gusts have done to all my plowing. We will be back to -35 at night this week, with highs in the negative teens.



This province is not for the week or the sick. But next week we are in single digits. I'll be able to get back out and clear snow.


I know the ban on wood stoves will make it out here eventually. I guess that is when I will make a separate shop with no artifact storage, and self insure the shop. I have the wood furnace in the shop, but note they are no longer available, the woodstove downstairs that greatly reduces our electric bill, and a fireplace n the living room which likely loses heat but the wife says we will never not have the fireplace.



In two more months, it could start melting.

Sorry to hear you were so sick Rob . You must be on the mend if you spent so much time on the old Oliver . Here in Québec January has neen colder than usual with an average of - minus 15 C ( 10 F ) . Snowfall has been average , we have about 60 cm ( 2 feet ) of snow on the ground right now . It will start melting in two months and we will see green stuff in three .I have a wood stove in my shop and it’s approved by my insurer but it sits in a divided section where my kitchen and sleeping area are . I had to install smoke and heat detectors and connect everything to a call center to satisfy them . Having high speed internet i also have his res video cams to keep watch and alert me when a deer or a moose walks by ….. My shop is also my hunting camp . I shot a nice 6 pointer deer just 150 m ( 400 feet ) away from the front door last fall .