I'll keep that in mind, but I think I'm going to shovel our back roof tomorrow. That's the only part of the house that doesn't have a metal roof, so everything coming off the back part of the house lands there and stays until someone removes it or it melts. However, letting it melt off brings the danger of ice damming and leaks, which have occurred before. We've been paying someone to do it but I am always unhappy with the job they do. We pay them more than I would ordinarily consider reasonable, and they just shovel everything from the roof onto my back porch, my utility shed, the driveway, and the path, so I have to come along later and shovel all of that stuff out of the way, which usually takes longer than they had spent on the roof. Plus, as long as they're up there, I'd prefer it if they shoveled all the snow off the roof, as I used to do when I did it. I used to shovel it myself and I've never fallen off of it, but the last time I shoveled the roof myself, I worried the whole time about slipping, and the stuff I might land on going down. It's not high enough to kill me but there are things that I could land on that would hurt. Given that I am going on seventy years old, having someone else do that seemed to be the sensible thing to do. However, for some reason, people who are willing to climb onto other people's roofs tend not to be the most responsible people in the world. I'll try the roof rake first, but I am usually unable to clear the roof adequately with it from the ground.
Our wintery mix was certainly a mess. I have a bunch of shoveling to do tomorrow but, since Michelle has to open her Center in the morning, I shoveled the car out, hoping that it doesn't snow more tonight. Either way, it will be easier to do because this last snow was very wet and it would be a lot harder to clear it if it were to freeze. As frequently occurs in Millinocket, some kind soul who I don't even know was passing by in a pickup truck with a plow, and he cleared the mouth of the driveway out, which is the most difficult to shovel since that's where the town's Public Works plow packs everything. So that was nice.
As it turned out, I couldn't bring myself to get up on the roof. I made one attempt and it seemed awfully slippery. Instead, I cleared out everything that I could reach from the top of a ladder. That part of the house used to be a porch so it's not very deep. There's about two-feet of snow that I couldn't reach up against the main part of the house. It's got too much of an icy casing for the roof rake to make a dent in it. If there's going to be an ice damming problem, I should know it soon because it's been above freezing and things are melting.
We're supposed to get another 3"-5" tonight into tomorrow...the exact same as last weekend. And no church tomorrow...the exact same as last weekend. Man, we'll go years with no snow at all, and now 2 weekends in a row. At least no trees came down blocking the right-of-way last week. Maybe that ice storm we had before Christmas took down all the weak ones. And 5" isn't really enough snow to burden them very much.
I went to bed at 2AM and it hadn't even started yet. Got up at 7AM to this: Not as deep as last Sunday (1 1/2" versus 5"), but it's the heavy dense wet stuff. You can kinda tell in the pic that it's coming down hard in those big fat flakes...picture postcard stuff. It's supposed to turn to rain soon, be done with by noon, and get near 50° at mid-afternoon. The harm is that there's all the melt+rain on the roads, and it's gonna get down to 20° tonight. The long-term forecast is already calling for snow again next weekend. We'll see...
Returned with a vengeance......Yes, the white stuff is falling down since 8:30.......The line between the sidewalk and the street can't be seen. Already 4".
We go for years with nary a flake, now we're due for ANOTHER storm on Thursday. They're calling for 4.5" again, pretty much the same as the one on Sunday and the one the prior weekend.