Proactive prevention
“The wetter, the weightier”; unsure if the phrase obeys the laws of grammar, but that was my motivation for today. Overnight, the winds dropped, and the temperature went above freezing. Knowing that there is a system inbound with rain in the payload, I decided to push myself (just a little bit harder) this morning. Get up, get out and get busy!
The snow on the deck might have gone away, if I waited, but there’s a risk involved. My deck might serve for the occasional BBQ, come summer, but a good load of ice could also see it drop to levels of defined instability. Better to be proactive. And so, with a certain spring in my step, I grabbed the shovel and started clearance.
The rule of snow removal is simple: if your shovel is too full, you won’t get things done any faster. Back injury, etc. Better to drop the load, choose a more rational amount and just learn to take your time. Actually, my deck isn’t large, and within the hour I had it clean and ready. Actually, ready before the rain started, shortly afterwards.
And now we wait. The warnings are still “up”; we might see a whole new cover of ice and slush by morning, but I’m confident that the danger has passed. I can relax (in other words, resume my natural posture) and see what the future will bring. No need to panic.
We had received a dunning message from son #2, when we mentioned that son #3 was poorly organized for a weather emergency. He pointed out that in a city of close to a million, the odds of someone falling to a winter storm were very low.
