More Snow and Cold!!

Sorry we have been away for so long. When we moved at the end of December, we lost the internet. We will be back up and running next week. It is quite a chore to be connected here as there is no DSL, T1, or Cable internet available here. They have a wireless sender stuck on the side of the grain tower in town and you have to 1) Be in direct line of sight to the tower (which we are,) and 2) Beg, plead, cajole, and almost bribe the owner of the sender to come up from Glenns Ferry and install and antennae at your house. We finally have an appointment and will be back up running next week.

Well, mid-week last week, we had extremely cold temperatures. We had four days in a row where the temperature in Fairfield did not come above -10 F (-23.3 C.) We had two days that dropped below -20 F (-28.9 C,) with the low being -27 F (-32.2 C.) This was followed by three big snow storms in a row. I’ve lost track of the exact amount, but we’ve gotten close to 36” on snow since Sunday evening.

With all of this snow falling on snow that had been frozen hard for a week or more, it created an unstable layer of snow on top of the hard-pack, which caused small and large avalanches all over the valleys here. One of our job sites had built an avalanche burm along the base of the mountain the house was being built next to. As the side of the hill let loose, the guys said the sliding snow hit the snow piled on the burm and launched the sliding snow into the air, scattering it in the wind like a shot gun scatters pellets. They said it was pretty cool. The owner of our company, Earl Engelmann, got trapped in his house for the second time this winter by sliding snow covering the only access to his house by 7’ to 8’ of snow and debris. It’s not just snow, it small trees, low branches, rocks, anything it picks up along the way down the hill.

Off to Jail I go: Next Tuesday, February 5th, I get to spend the day in the Elmore County Jail Facility. Engelmann, Inc. is going be building 4 County Jails in the next 18 months and so I am spending the day wandering through the latest facility to get a feel for the construction methods and procedures. It should be an interesting day, to say the least. I’ll take as many pictures as I can and post them next week.