According to my diary, January 30th was “one of the wildest days I have ever experienced.” When I woke up in the morning, the temperature was just at freezing, 0°C. Our driveway was covered with 8 inches of new snow which sat on 3 inches of slush. I had to take several runs with our All Wheel Drive Subaru, trying to weave up our driveway, so I could go to work. Eventually the car did make it up the drive onto the road.
During the morning the wind direction changed and began to strongly blow in from the north. The temperature started dropping, and a fierce blizzard of horizontal snow began. It didn’t take long for a power outage to darken the whole McBride area. The buses were summoned to the local schools which closed early because of the the power outage and quickly deteriorating weather.
Not much work could be done in our dark Forestry Office either, so we also were allowed to leave early. After I had slowly and carefully white-knuckled my way down the highway and up our road through the whiteout, I didn’t even attempt to drive down our deeply, snow-drifted driveway, choosing instead to just park the car up along the road, and slog my way through the snow, down to the house.
With the power off at our house, we reverted into a pioneer mode. We still had water, thanks to our gravity feed waterline and heat, thanks to our wood stove. Our electric stove of course was rendered useless, but we were able to some cook soup on top of our wood stove. We then spent the long evening hours, without any radio or television, trying to read our books by dim candlelight.
The power suddenly came back on at 9:00, but the storm wasn’t done with us. By bedtime the outside temperature had dropped to -20°C (-4°F). I began becoming concerned that the deep ruts I had made that morning trying to get up the driveway, would freeze in place and cause us difficulties until Spring. One of my co-workers at Forestry, had her car frozen to the pavement, when the slush around her tires froze.
When we woke up the next morning the skies were clear and the temperature had dropped further to a very frigid -28°C (-18°F). It was beautiful though. It seemed like a white marshmallowy world outside. The trees had never been so overloaded with ice and snow, and were all bent over with the weight.
I hitched a ride to work with a co-worker who lived further up the road. At noon, I borrowed a Forestry truck, bought a 100 foot extension cord at the hardware store and drove home to plug in the block heater of our car to warm its engine, so I could start it (the Subaru was still, sitting up on the road). I strung the long extension cord from the car down the driveway to the garage, I was then able to connect the block heater into the power in our garage. I couldn’t jump start the car using the Forestry truck, because the hood release on the Subaru was frozen shut. I then returned to work.
After work, I hitched a ride home and when I arrived, I was happily surprised to find that in my absence, our driveway had been plowed by one of the Mennonite farmers who lived up the road. The block heater had done its job and the Subaru started right up, so with a clean driveway and a warm engine, I was able to drive down our driveway and park the car by the house.
The cold snap that had blown in by the winter storm, was just beginning. The next morning it was -38°C (-36°F), followed by a -35°C (-31°F) day, which was followed by four consecutive days of -30°C (-22°F) temperatures, before finally warming to a balmy -28°C (-18°F) day. While our gravity feed waterline continued to work, the plumbing underneath the house in our crawl space, froze, so I had spend hours under the house thawing out our pipes.
When we got a morning of -25°C, I was very relieved with the direction the temperatures were taking, but unfortunately that was followed with days of morning temperatures around -30°C to -25°C (-22°F to -13°F) which lasted for a week.
You can view my paintings at: davidmarchant2.ca
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