Here in central Virginia, we are several hundred miles south of the Mason-Dixon line. Somehow, when I imagined moving to the South, I envisioned cool and sunny winters with the occasional miserably rainy day. Those of you who live in the area are laughing at me right now – that’s OK, I deserve it. Right now, we are under a blizzard warning – we’ve already had about 6 inches of snow and we are expecting 24 more inches. The wind is starting to pick up and within the next hour or so, sustained winds should be over 25 mph and they will continue until late tomorrow night. Like I said, not exactly what I imagined when I moved to “the South.” This is expected to be one for the record books, but I have to say, I’ve lived here almost 7 years and every year we seem to have at least a couple of substantial snow storms.
The weather forecasters deserve some credit on this one – they have been predicting this storm for the past several days and timed the snow right down to the hour. The forecast called for partly cloudy skies early this morning.
It was hard to believe a sunrise like this would happen the morning of a snowstorm! As I tracked the hour by hour forecast on my computer, it said that flurries should start by 11:00 so since I was between meetings, I headed out and moved the horses from the back pasture to the smaller pasture next to the barn. They hate being stuck in stalls, so I made it a little easier on myself by not having to walk way out to the back field when it would be snowing hard.
Sure enough, by 11:15, the flurries started.
A downside to working from home is that I don’t get snow days but one of the benefits is that I can see the horses from my office! Even in the snow, they were pretty content for most of the afternoon.
Finally about 4:00, I finished my last meeting and decided that it was time to bring them in and lock up the barn for the night. It was coming down pretty hard by then and they were ready to come in anyhow.
Gator decided the driveway needed a pass with the tractor before it got too late, so about 7:00, he bundled up and headed out with the dogs. After 10 minutes, the dogs came back. Gator blew in 20 minutes later, cold and full of snow (and a little miffed that the dogs abandoned him!). Not sure if it did any good to plow but hopefully he’ll be able to tell where they driveway is tomorrow!
Stay tuned for day 2 of the snowstorm!
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