One the things I was looking forward to when I moved to Columbia, Missouri in 2003 was the fact that Columbia usually received less than half of the annual snowfall as that of Altoona. This turned out to be true, which was great. But that doesn't mean something out of the ordinary wasn't possible on occasion.

I awoke Friday morning December 1, 2006 to find that 15 inches of snow had fallen on the City of Columbia.

The mid-west is used to snow. But everyone I worked with who was originally from this area said that getting this much snow overnight was very unusual.

And here I was thinking I would be leaving all of this behind when I moved from Altoona, Pennsylvania in 2003.

In Altoona, 15 inches of snow is a lot, but definitely not unusual. The fleet of city and township plow trucks would be out pre-treating the roadways before the snow started. After the snow started accumulating, the plow trucks would run all night long keeping the roads clear. I quickly discovered that Columbia, with it's annual snowfall being nowhere near that of Altoona, didn't have a fleet of plow trucks. The small number of plow trucks that were available spent their time keeping the main roads clear. This meant that the secondary and neighborhood roads were out of luck.

This is how every neighborhood in the city looked the morning after the snowfall.

Not a plow truck in sight.

All the city neighborhoods would have to wait for a while to see a plow, (i.e. several days).

So how do you get rid of 15 inches of snow ?

Shovel it by hand ! Even though I wasn't happy about shoveling snow again, I was used to it and attacked the project like I had done many times in the past.

I started at the garage and shoveled out to my car, and also took care of the front walk.

I love the way the sun reflects off of the ice on the trees.

Sunlight reflects off of the ice on the trees.

I got my car cleaned off and the driveway cleared.

And then I thought, "Why stop here ?"

I can't go anywhere, and I've got nothing else to do. So I might as well clear as much as I can.

And so I kept shoveling. Eventually I cleared the entire road in front of my house.

The bright sun did its job and quickly melted what residue remained after shoveling.

With the driveway cleared, I let the bright sunlight do its thing.

By this time, a 4-wheel drive truck had driven past the house making a pair of tracks. I thought this would be a good opportunity to see how the Mark VIII would navigate the deep snow. But not in this direction, (downhill) ! If I would get stuck, I would never get back home.

So I went the other way, (uphill). I played for a while, cutting a few more tracks in the snow.

A Lincoln Mark VIII is definitely not a vehicle for driving in the snow. But it did ok around the immediate vicinity of my house.

And I thought I was going to get away from this nonsense when I moved from Altoona !