Welcome to North Dakota!

Two weekends ago, which would have made it the 29th and 30th of April we were hit with  blizzard up here in North Dakota.  And when I say blizzard I mean a snow hurricane.  That was really my thought as I lay in my bed in a trailer house listening to the wind trying to blow the whole thing off the hill it sits on.  Come to find out having a bunch of trailers on top of a hill in windy country is kind of poor planning because once you got off the hill things were significantly better, still terrible but better.  For example: off the hill you could see about 30 feet in front of you, on top of the hill you couldn't see the end of your hood while you are stupidly trying to drive to work (I wasn't stupid. I was riding with someone else who was driving).  Let me show you, and be warned all of these pictures were taken with my cell phone so don't expect Pulitzer quality.  

This is when it has finally stopped snowing on the 1st of May.  Lyle is digging a path through the drifts so we can go check the plant.  Do you know how big a backhoe is?  Those drifts are above the tires.

 The dashes of red are Lyle's car in front of the plant which he was unfortunate that he drove it out to the shift because that's when it all started.  It had to wait a few days to make it home.  But there was an extra company truck lying around so Lyle was able to go home after working 3 straight 12 hour shifts because the next shift guys couldn't make it out from town.

 This is the back of the plant, out of the wind.  That's a full size shop door and a big dumpster buried there on the side.

 This drift is about 5 feet tall and ran pretty much the entire length of the plant.  We are supposed to check some gauges in that shack over there but that may have been neglected for a day or two.

But really we were lucky it was so cold and snowy out...

 Because it froze this 6 foot wave solid was just feet from washing the plant away.

 

You may think "why did he hold the camera sideways to take this picture?"  Well i didn't. That thick sheet of scary ice death really is sticking horizontally out off of some pipes.   

Meanwhile, back on the hill...

 My car was well buried.  And this picture was taken after it had been sunny and warm for about 13 hours.

Like the picture above, this drift covering half my trailer and making it so I had to pound/kick/slam/dig out my front door so I could get out, is only about 7 feet tall instead of all the way to the top of the trailer like it was originally.

Other than 2 days of rather scary wind and snow, huge drifts left over, poor Lyle working 36 hours straight, the only other problems this storm made where a few thousand downed power lines and a couple thousand people without power for 1 to 4 days.  No biggie right?   

So needless to say, if you want to come visit us here, wait until June through September.  All the other time is when we will be out visiting you people to get away from this stuff.