Waiting for the D.O.T.

They began naming these winter storms at some point when I was not paying attention.  Winter Storm Diego rolled across the mid-west and into Western North Carolina Friday night - we heard it gently tapping on the roof during the night.  It had not accumulated much by Saturday morning, but by mid-day it was really coming down, perhaps five or six inches in all.  Temperatures have risen above freezing this morning, though, and when I went out to clear the driveway I faced about one inch of heavy slush.

 

“Driveway shoveled, waiting for the D.O.T..” I proudly captioned this photo on Facebook, “But it looks like they have their hands full.”  They do indeed, as I discovered when I poked around on Facebook – down trees and power outages in Highlands, and much worse east of here in Buncombe and Henderson counties.  

In addition to escaping Diego's bulls-eye, we are just above freezing here, 35 degrees as I write, and the snow is melting and dripping fast off the roof.  What a difference a few hundred feet in elevation makes! - it's 2650 at our house but 3850 on Main Street, where the Highlands Newspaper weather cam shows (through a snow-occluded lens) no traffic moving.

We knew this storm was coming and we prepared as well as we could, so there is plenty of fuel oil for the furnace, gasoline for the generator, and water captured in buckets to flush toilets.  But thankfully the power is still on and has not even flickered.  So we are in that enviable place:  warm and cosy, all the Christmas lights on, looking outside at melting snow, waiting for the D.O.T.