Making Paths

We are getting a lot of snow this week. It is a dense, moisture-filled snow, so I only sink a few inches as I tramp out the paths on my snowshoes. Pictured is the path from the back door to the kennel.

Buried Truck

My dog truck is buried. You are looking at the back end of the truck in the middle of the picture. I have included a picture of this same truck below so that you can see how tall it is.

By the way, this has been the lowest snow year we have ever seen here although the truck does happen to be parked in one of the higher drift zones due to its proximity to some trees.

Snow Movers - The Bison Hump

This informative sign is located at Old Faithful in Yellowstone Park. It explains why the bison has such a large, prominent hump, giving this animal its distinctive profile. Bison live where there is very deep snow in the winter, so to reach the grasses that they eat, they must move a lot of snow. They do this by putting their heads down and swinging them from side to side to push the snow away. If you have ever tried to lift too large a shovelful of snow, then you know how difficult this task is. The buffalo needs massive muscles attached to his head and neck. The large hump is there to provide a big anchoring area for those muscles.

Spring Blizzard

I seem to have gotten out of the habit of posting to the blog. There were a couple glitches with my phone service last month which helped knock me off my routine.

We are having a warm blizzard right now - lots of snow and extreme winds, but the warm temperature means the wind chills are only in the 20 to 30 below zero fahrenheit range. The highway has been closed and will probably remain closed all night.

The doghouses are getting filled with snow as the wind swirls around them and blows the snow in from every conceivable angle. Some of the dogs hold their ground and thus maintain at least a dog-sized space in their house. Others exit their houses which then rapidly fill up completely with hard, wind-packed snow.

Sometimes a drift will form so fast that a doghouse will be buried before the inside has a chance to be filled with snow. The dogs in that situation will always exit their houses and sleep in the snow. I rescued several buried houses today. One of them took me a while to find because it was a full foot underneath the snow. That means that the snow had risen three feet in that spot since yesterday. If the wind quits tomorrow, I will start shoveling snow out of fifty houses and putting in fresh straw.