It’s been a hard winter so far. Lots of snow and really cold temperatures. Just got back to more reasonable temperatures. The climatologists say that things are so changeable (and difficult to predict), what with -30° C temperatures just a few days ago. I checked the hi’s and lo’s on the weather app and surprisingly in 1977 the low was -38° C. Guess things aren’t changing climate-wise as much as we thought. Suspiciously, though, I lived here at that time and don’t remember winter being that cold.

One thing I know, we are back to a time when a snow blower is a necessity. I have used mine several times already. Trouble is these devices weigh a ton (and of course the gas in the tank starts to deteriorate while it sits waiting to be used again).  I see a great business opportunity for somebody to create a snow remover that doesn’t weigh a lot and runs without requiring the owner to act like a mechanic: adjusting the choke or putting in those magical additives to the gasoline. Maybe it will be electric – I now have an electric lawn mower that cuts well and meets that criteria. Anyway, those who use these heavy things (not sure what young people do these days – do they leave the snow and just drive over it?) tend to be older – wealthy boomers I guess. I know they just don’t have the strength to move these monsters around. Mine must weigh 200 lbs.

I cleared the driveway twice today and guess what? They are forecasting 10-15cm more snow tonight…and freezing rain. The scourge of Canada’s urban scene must be freezing rain. Snow is hard to take, but a coating of ice on everything is just too much – the icing on the cake so to speak. It’s coming tonight they say.

When we were young, we yearned for freezing rain so that schools would be cancelled, and we could then get our skates out and play hockey on the streets. Never mind that for everyone else, it was and continues to be a curse. The last time we had a long-term freezing rain session (like what they are now forecasting) it coated everything, cars – try opening doors when heavy ice gets on it; trees – the heavy ice brought down many limbs; streets – it kept people from walking anywhere and many were out of power for several days. Those in rural areas suffered even more. Could we be repeating the great ice storm of 1998?

That storm of 1998 was bad, but a frightening winter memory I retain happened to me over 40 years ago now. At the time l lived in a rural area close to London. It snowed that entire day and then coated everything with freezing rain. The winds blew viciously the entire day. My neighbor, trapped by conditions in the city, called and pleaded for me to go next door – 200 feet away – to shut off the oven which was set on auto turn-on, but sadly not auto turn-off. Both he and his wife couldn’t get home. I told them I would try to get to the stove, otherwise they would have to call the fire department. Who knows if they would ever have been able to get there.

After he called, I started to put on my heavy coat and boots. My mother said we should go together as it would be safer that way. (In hindsight I wonder about that logic). Out we went. The snow and freezing rain were driving so hard that we couldn’t see. We held hands and slowly ventured toward the house which from time to time we could see in the distance. Just when we thought we were on the right course, the wind would blow, the snow and rain would slam into our faces and then we would lose track of where we were.  Frightening. Snow drifts formed wherever there was an isolated object. Those drifts could be five feet high and we wouldn’t even notice them until we had walked right into them and fallen over.

After what seemed like an eternity we got to the neighbour’s house and had to break a window to get in. I shut off the oven and then mom and I ventured out into the wild again. Some how we made it home. It took us more than two hours to make that trek and we were both cold and exhausted when we got in the back door of our house. When I think of it, we could have been much worse off – we could have been lost out there, as the storm lasted several more hours and it became even worse that evening.

It was an unforgettable experience that still makes me leery about living in the rural areas, particularly when a Canadian winter storm hits.