It's Global Warming

That's what the idiots on TV are trying to tell me.

And they keep telling me that some how it's my fault.

Average temps in Maine this morning were 15 deg F below zero.
With the wind chill factored in that's about minus 25 degrees F,  that is something like 35 Celsius below zero.

                                                   Blatantly stolen from The People's Cube

Winter Paradise?

Not hardly.

While digging myself out of last night's snow I got a call about this.

The stuff my nightmares are made off

Because it does this to the inside of the house

Two hours of beating on it with axes, picks and sundry sordid implements of destruction got us this far. See the channel we cut in the left side. (click on the picture to embigen) When we opened it up we drained about 50 gallons of melt water that were dammed up behind the ice. As soon as we drained it off the dripping inside the house subsided.

Five hours of beating on it and a pile of aching bones saw most of it gone.

Three more valleys look the same. Hope they don't cause more problems because they are not quite as easy to reach.

February Cold

Over six feet of snowfall in the last two weeks, and we are bracing for another twelve inches Saturday evening through Sunday.

Icicles looking deceptively pretty in the first sunshine in about ten days

Sunshine that is just strong enough to melt the ice a bit and make the icicles grow.

Most of the time they look a lot more menacing. How cheerful can you be when this is what greets you when you open the blinds every morning ?

After two months of  the gray skies and snow your brain has turned to mush . . . more so than it already is

And you want to crawl in a hole, hibernate for a few months and wake up when it is all gone.

Six foot snow banks make driving a bit hazardous

Portland harbor viewed from the East End in winter

An oil barge being tugged over to the Merrill terminal to unload

An oil tanker awaits its turn in the channel

Civil war cannon in the snow

Fort Gorges with Peaks Island in the background.

This is what happens to your rear view mirror when snowbanks get in the way and a second driver tries to crowd in where only one car will fit. . . . 45$ for the new one. The plastic housing is cracked but may be saveable.

Making a new snow-blower chute

First step is to warm up the shop.

So fire up the wood stove.

Take a 2 foot long piece of 1/4 inch wall, six inch diameter PVC sewer pipe saved from what was left on my lawn by the road crew when they re-did the sewers mains 6 years ago.

Run it through the table saw and take about an inch and a half out of it lengthwise.

Set in on the cross cut slide and make two cuts five inches long, perpendicular to the original lengthwise split, twelve inches up from one end.

Like so

Using the plumber's torch heat up the remaining area at the last cut to soften it and force the thing in to a 20 degree or so bend. Drill and bolt corners to hold bend. Some additional heat was needed to bend the corners and make it all fit. Caution burning PVC gives of some nasty and likely poisonous fumes.

Drill and fit to snow-blower.

Try and cut though four foot tall frozen snow bank left by plow truck across you driveway.

Reward yourself with home made chicken and cilantro sauce pizza.

More wretched weather.

After cleaning up last Monday's 33 inch blizzard, we got whacked by another 12 inches of snow on Friday.

 Three hours of snow-blowing

 and shoveling

 Gets us more or less

 Cleared out

Then Monday we get another 12 inches

So I get suited up with six layers of clothing. . . .

To do battle with nature

And nature naturally wins. This is what a baseball sized chunk of ice does to quarter inch thick wall PVC pipe at about 5 degrees F. That's about minus 20 Celsius.

So I get the color matching Duck-tape which is about as sticky as wax paper at this temperature and hit it with the heat gun to make it all stick together and hope it holds.

And finish the job trying hard not to pick up any more ice chunks.

I'm done for now . . . . til tomorrow morning when I get to do it all over again.