Some of the drifts were taller than the bite of the snowblower so it took a bit of work to get those cleared, but after two-and-a-half hours we had everything in the front cleaned up and had made a small dent out back. (I still have to shovel off the decks, something I'll take care of sometime later today.)
As storms go, this wasn't anything special. We've gotten as much snow during other storms. We've had a series of storms that dumped snow that totaled in feet. We've had storms with very high winds. We've had storms that coated everything is inches of ice and knocked out power across most of the state for days. In other words, it wasn't the “storm of the century” by any means, the news media notwithstanding. It was winter.
If all of this happened in July, the media would have something worthwhile to hype.
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Speaking of snowblowing, I have to comment about the Official Weekend Pundit Snowblower.* This being the first real winter we've had to put it through its paces, I have to say I'm impressed. It uses about half the fuel of the original Official Weekend Pundit Snowblower while clearing the same amount of snow in half the time. It also throws it a lot farther than the old one, making it easier to ensure there will be room to put more snow should we have more storms (an almost certainty).*This is not a plug for the manufacturer, merely a commentary.
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At least with this storm very few people in New Hampshire lost power. Some of that has to be attributed to the snow itself, being rather dry, light, and 'fluffy'. Not much accumulated on the trees and that which did was scoured off by the winds. Past storms with heavier, wetter snow almost always brought down tree limbs which in turn knocked out power lines.Apparently our neighbors to the south didn't fare quite so well, with widespread power outages. But then they had much higher winds (they actually got the 'blizzard' part of the storm - high winds, zero visibility, heavy snowfall - while we got just the snow).
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Bogie reports she received over 30 inches of snow in her part of New Hampshire and has the pictures to prove it.*************
Eric the Viking points us to this jab at the US Postal Service by FedEx:“When it needs to get there Saturday, turn to FedEx.”You'd have thought that after all this time the USPS would have gotten their house in order. But a couple of decades later outfits like FedEx and UPS are eating their lunch and stealing their dessert, too. This shows the difference between how private enterprise and government operations differ when performing the same service. Is it any wonder the USPS is circling the drain?
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I think Dr. Benjamin Carson has a much better solution to health care than the train wreck also known as ObamaCare. It makes perfect sense, does away with heavy-handed health bureaucracies (and the bureaucrats that go with them), and most importantly, it will work. That's why it will never happen.(H/T Maggie's Farm)
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Rand Paul has an excellent rant about too much government control over what consumers can and cannot buy, listing the things that we can no longer buy without being fined by the government. Included are such items as toilets, appliances, light bulbs, and a whole host of other things that may be 'energy efficient' but don't work very well and, in the end, really aren't all that efficient.*************
As if we need any more examples of how ObamaCare is going to hurt far more people than it's going to help, there are these two stories from across the pond that show the UK version isn't just hurting and neglecting patients, it's killing them on a scale that would get just about any other industry in major legal trouble and people would be going to prison. It doesn't help that the BBC is trying to paint the NHS as a great success and failing miserably.This is what we can look forward to as the destructive tentacles of ObamaCare start dismantling one of the best health care systems in the world all in the name of 'fairness'.