When Snow Is Measured in Feet Rather Than Inches

Looking at the series of pictures from Buffalo, NY, I feel reminded of our winters in Norway when I had to start my tractor every 2 hours to remove the snow from the road and our farm yard. It would almost be futile to keep track of snow amounts by counting inches or centimeters. No, most often it came by the feet. 2 feet in one night was not unheard of. The next morning we had to dig ourselves out of the door and make a tunnel to get into our 5000sqft. pig stable. At the time our house had a steel roof. When the snow piled up high enough you could hear a loud crack, then a prolonged rumble and hope nobody would be standing close to the building, because the person would be buried under heaps and heaps of snow. The entire roof load coming down like an avalanche, would have crushed him. I also remember the days and weeks after such a snowfall. Icicles would start growing from the roof edge. As the days went by those icicles would gradually be pushed over the edge and hit the upper-floor windows making it impossible to look out. Our house was a log home and we had 4 or 5 wood burning stoves in the house. We carried wood from the barn to the house and fed the stoves with it. A cozy warmth was filling the 150 year old house and we would sit in our living room looking at the high peaks, covered in snow and ice. When the sky had turned blue again we often observed strong winds blowing snow off the peaks. The high mountains kept the sun from shining into our valley, so it could get quite cold as well. When the month of February came around the sun got over the tops for a few minutes only. We would celebrate with coffee outside. From that day on the sun would shine longer every day. Those are great memories for us. We were much younger then and we thought winter was exciting. I still think that winter is exciting but I sure don’t wish 3 ft of snow making life difficult these days.