What's next?

This has been a really strange winter. First, we had probably a record low amount of snow through the end of last year. Then, we finally get a few inches here and there, but not enough to really make it feel like a real winter. Then we get wicked cold, which means it's way too cold to snow. I have one of those nifty electronic weather station thingees at home with a remote thermometer outside so I can see both the inside and outside temps to the tenth of a degree. It got down to -3.8 one night and pretty much stayed around zero all day. These ultra low temps lasted for several days. The days were sunny, but cold and windy. Yesterday, MLK day and a holiday for me, I awakened to falling snow. I had planned to go in to work. Holidays are great for getting all sorts of maintenance done with no interruptions and the ability to restart servers at will. When I saw the snow, and no sign that it would relent, I decided to stay home and work from home. Ah, technology! I can work on at least half the computers at work remotely, running service packs and other updates, installing software, etc. It's great. The only thing I can't do is install operating systems, which requires I physically be at the computer. So, I installed Windows XP SP2 on all our new computers, installed some apps that I hadn't had a chance to install, and did a bunch of maintenance, all from the comfort of my sofa while I caught up on a bunch of stuff I had TiVo'd. All the while, outside it snowed and snowed and snowed - nearly a foot of the white stuff fell! My husband came home on his "lunch" break (at 4:30PM) and snowblowed the driveway while I made his dinner. The plows had yet to come to our neighborhood and he was worrying about whether or not the Beetle would make it down our street when he came home. The clearance is only about 4" and the snow was much deeper than that! When he left after lunch to head down to Coeur d'Alene to end his day, he drove his 4-wheel drive van up and down the street a few times to make a path for the Beetle. He called me at 7;30PM. He had left Sandpoint at 5:40PM for the drive to Coeur d'Alene (normally an hour drive) and was only just leaving CdA to head home. Ugh. The roads were nasty, accidents and slide-offs abounded. The news was stating that in Spokane freezing rain had been falling all day, coating the roads, sidewalks, and cars with a thick layer of ice. Apparently, that's what Tom had run into on his way to CdA. Jonathan called to tell me that school was cancelled for Tuesday. I'm sure the president of Whitworth had decided not to force his staff to travel treacherous roads. Jonathan said just walking to the dining hall was a test of balance and ice skating skills. Fortunately, by the time Tom started driving home, it was warming up and the roads were a little less slick. He actually made it home in about 75 minutes. Still no snow plows. So, he went out and plowed out a lane the length of our street. His fear was that if the plows didn't come before he left for work at 5:45AM, he definitely wouldn't get the Beetle out. It had started raining and the foot of fallen snow was holding water like crazy. It would be too high for the Beetle to get through and he'd likely end up high-centered. So, he snowblowed for an hour. This morning, it's raining like mad, it's about 40 degrees outside, but in the higher elevations the roads are water on ice. The plow finally came down our street at about 7AM. Schools are closed all over the region. Of course, it's Winter Carnival in Sandpoint. Every single year, without exception, we get a huge warm-up, usually accompanied by Chinook winds (warm winds like the Santa Anas in California), and all the snow melts. You'd think they'd figure this out and move the date to a week earlier or later. It used to be in February and we had beautiful snow sculpture competitions, with scultpures on nearly every corner in town. For the past umpteen years, the snow sculpture competition has been ruined by rains and warm temps. I miss the sculpture contest. I wish they'd get a clue and change the dates. Anyway, it is now warm, raining, melting the snow, which will bring flooding in some areas....what's next?