I hope everyone is safe and sound in the middle of these storms! As some of you know, I work for a multinational company and we have offices all over the world. Yesterday there was a worldwide mail warning that our Montréal office was running half gas due to the storm. They were warning about possible delays in dealing with projects, since a part of the workforce hadn't been able to get to work. I later talked to one of my fellow Project Managers there and he told me it hadn't been fun to skid all the way to work! I cannot imagine enduring such thing! Lovely, lovely pics of the snow, Thinman, thank you for posting them. Martha, you're a romantic soul - Libra, no doubt about that! ;-) Eduarda

It really brings things into perspective and puts us all on the same level. We need to be willing to help our fellow human beings when they are in need. And we need to know that we can count on our neighbors if we are ever in need. I add my prayers to those already offered. Martha

Bernd, the trick to getting a snow blower to go through very high snow is to- First slug through and get one pathway through the snow. Once this initial path is in take swaths only 1/4 the width of the snow blower. This way the auger on the blower can handle the amount of snow going in and will eat right through very deep snow. When you try to gobble through a whole width (in my case 24 inches) it is too much and you end up trying to plow the snow rather than feeding it into the auger and discharging it. I had over 2 feet and by taking about 6 inch 'cuts' off the edge it ate right through the snow and sent it flying. The first pass is rough and requires a lot of back and forth to get it through. You also need a 2 stage blower, single stages cannot handle any heavy loads. Electric snow blowers are only good for very, very light snows (useless, in my opinion). I had to rescue my next door neighbors who have an electric blower; trying to be 'green' It could not touch the heavy snow we had and they were having a horrible time trying to shovel out......like a good neighbor, I was there to bail them out with my carbon dioxide breathing, snow eating machine. Jon

All OK with us. Saturday night was actually a lot worse for the garden than Sunday. Saturday's winds really blew things around, and we got about 2 inches of rain. Sunday morning we worked in the yard until about 1pm, then had a quick lunch and I floated around in the pool to cool off. About 2 or 3pm, I noticed it was getting a lot darker to the west, and was thinking I needed to go cover the plants that had their "hail hats" blown off the night before. Then we got lots of thunder, rolling thunder that just didn't let up, so I hightailed it to the garden to get things covered asap. We battened down the hatches as best we could and went in to watch the weather just in time to see that it was very near, about two miles north and headed towards us. Luckily, we greased out by being a little bit south of the track of the Edmond tornado. Was worried about my Deer Creek friends and family, though! We got the tornado closet ready and watched the news (make sure to download a streaming app in case your power goes out, too!). I had KFOR's app streaming on my phone in my hand while I stood outside in the driveway and watched. Dawn, if it's not raining or hailing or lightning too badly, I like to stand outside to see what's going on. Feels safer than listening to the newscasters sometimes! I was definitely scared, but all was well. My in-laws live near Luther so was in touch with them, they were out of town in Dallas but when they got home last night their house was still standing and pets all accounted for. No power, but that's minor in the scheme of things. It cleared out and the weather turned beautiful again, so we headed outside with a glass of wine to relax. Had no idea it'd gotten so bad in Little Axe and Shawnee until later. My boss lives in Prague near Shawnee. She said the debris came ahead of the storm, just floating giant pieces of sheet metal and trees down like feathers. When the wind died down and things became completely still, they ran and hid in an interior closet - came out and the corral roof was gone, as was a bunch of patio furniture that was missing entirely or shredded and trees down. They felt the roof of their house pulled up but it didn't come off. Scary. Everyone be safe today!