At least a half foot of new snow

Sue Schimscher's photo

No walk with Melanie or Lily today, as nobody wanted to drive anywhere after getting another blast of snow last night. According to Sue's picture (taken from the Seeing Bellingham Facebook group), she measured 8.5 inches. I believe it! I decided to wait until the sun came out and the snow had stopped before going out and taking some pictures of my own.

Downtown sidewalk partially shoveled

I had to walk to the bus in the street, mostly, since the sidewalks were not cleared and it was almost impossible to navigate the deep snow when it wasn't compacted yet. I watched for cars (there weren't many out) and plowed back through the snow  to where the sidewalk should be when one came by. It was very tiring to go less than a mile to the bus. And then  I had to wait a half hour longer than usual for it to show up. But indeed it did. In fact, three showed up at once. They had chains on their tires, which must have made it much harder to drive. I didn't expect the bus to be on time, and I was not disappointed.

My picture of the snow

This photo was taken just after getting off the bus on the way home. It was deep and untrammeled, so I figured it might give you an idea of what I was trudging through. For much of the way home, however, the snow was easier to navigate, as other people had helped to make the sidewalk snow more dense and tightly packed. 

David Parker's photo

I also found this amazing photo of Lake Padden on that Facebook group. I had heard that it got cold enough for the lake to begin to freeze over, something I've never seen before on that lake. I learned that in 1980, it froze solid all the way across, and people were actually skating on it!

Every time I think that we must be through the worst of it, more challenges present themselves. However, we expect that we might see above-freezing temperatures by Saturday, New Years Day. Or maybe not. I do hope one of these days I'll be able to resume my usual activities. In the meantime, there's lots of movies and other stuff to stream. This too shall pass, right?

:-)