Well, we had a white Christmas...sort of.
We had almost 39 inches of snow in our town from the storm that hit us a little over a week ago. There was a lot of snow to move, snow to pull off of roofs to prevent ice dams, to move away from vents, to clear from doorways and stairs, and so on.
When the Weather GuysTM forecast over 2 inches of rainfall that would start during the evening Christmas Eve, the warning also went out to clear snow from roofs because the rain added to 30+ inches of snow would make the snow very heavy and possibly cause collapses. With that warning in mind, I removed as much snow as I could from the roof of my mother’s home as well as two adjoining vacation homes owned by friends of mine.
The rain started as forecast, along with much warmer temperatures (in the 50’s).
Imagine my surprise when upon waking on Christmas morning I found every trace of snow to be gone from the roofs of every home in the neighborhood. By the time the rain ended a good portion of the snow was gone from the ground as well, with only the highly compacted snowbanks remaining. Over 30 inches of snow melted away in a little over 8 hours. Between the 2 inches of rain and 30+ inches of snow melting away, the equivalent of over 5 inches of rain fell over a period of ~20 hours.
It took about 12 hours for 30+ inches of snow to fall, and a week later it took about 8 hours longer than that to make most of it melt away.
Amazing.
