Rain Before Single Digit Weather ???

It has gradually warmed up this week and it is forecasted to rain tonight after midnight. Then almost a 100% chance of rain on Saturday. Does that mean all the snow that is covering everybody's yards will disappear? Then to top that off, the paper this morning was warning everybody of "dangerously cold" weather that will start when I get up on Sunday with windchill's below 0°. That's a drastic movement in weather after a day of rain. Sounds like fun but those kind of changes in weather are typical of Indiana weather.

The hounds and dogs don't seem to mind the cold weather. This photo was just a few days ago. Since that time all the snow and ice have melted from those cables, not so much on the roof while it was sunny this week but setting right at 32°. 

This morning though, Ava was raring to go but couldn't find anyone to come outside, run and play with her. The other four were back inside the warm house doing their normal morning naps. Not Ava ... she is a working breed and is ready to work most of her waking hours. She is up early and high energy for the rest of the day. 

When I saw the fallen limbs last week, almost two weeks ago, I thought they were small trees on the berm that had fallen over because they had missed the cables and fence. Yesterday while I was looking at the tops of all the trees along the berm, I discovered those tree limbs leaning towards the left fell from THE TOP of the tallest tree still standing. 

You can see a limb hanging after being broke in the storm. It will eventually fall. 

This is from an older incident of a limb falling. Not sure when that happened.

That is the tree where the fairly large limbs have fallen straight down. Look near the top and you can see the missing limbs. A couple of summers ago the utility company had their tree limb cutting contractors out here cutting limbs away from their two power lines. Those small men from Guatemala (I asked) were climbing to the top of those trees where you can tell the limbs had been trimmed, with spikes on their boots, wearing a safety harness and a small chainsaw in their hand. It was amazing to see them work. It also showed me just how strong those trees are.

So this is what I am looking at this morning. I will take a photo of this same area tomorrow morning after it rains tonight. 

Tuesday morning I became pretty motivated. I didn't want to wait for the sunshine to melt the thick ice and snow on the driveway. So I headed out with my snow shovel, a flat edged shovel to break up the thick ice and just to try a new way ... I took my blow torch I bought last summer to kill weeds. You can see by the hounds and dogs they were completely wore out after standing at the living room windows watching every move I made for almost three hours of work. 

I started here at the bottom of this picture, right in front of the garage doors. On the left side I had two tracks of solid ice and snow from where my tires compressed the snow and ice every time I drove out of the driveway and came back to the garage. On the right side of the drive I had a small coating of ice with ares of thick ice and deep snow. I had shoveled most of the snow away last week but not the hard frozen stuff. Those pictures were in my previous blog post. 

I thought the propane fueled blow torch would melt that snow and thick ice then turn this into a 30 minute job. I couldn't have been more wrong. It would only melt the edge of those big clumps of ice/snow and then what did melt almost froze immediately because in the morning when I started this project it was 18°.

By the time I took all of these photos it was after 12:30pm and the temps were around 38°. So I spent hours chopping up the ice with that flat edge shovel and then scraping the snow and ice to each side to dump into the yard. 

These are good examples of what covered the driveway. Any bare concrete was a result of me breaking up the ice and sliding it to the side. That spot on the left that is surround by snow and ice is an example of the snow and ice was left, It was so hard I couldn't make a dent into it after slamming that shovel into it to break it up.

I went inside for a 30 minute break with hopes the warmer sunshine would melt it enough where I could chip away at it. 

As you can see in this photo that did happen where I got almost all of it removed from the driveway. Most of what was left was on the side of the road where the snow plows had left tall amounts of snow in front of the driveway that was still frozen solid. I finally said "enough is enough, I'm done" ... and put things away leaving it there for the snow to melt this week.

Three days later most of that has melted but not all of it. 

Yesterday while leaving my friends house up the street, I glanced up and saw these geese flying in formation expecting just this group. I was a little confused why they were flying north. Well to my surprise, they just kept on coming. 

Each photo is a whole different group ... all flying north. You might have to look hard to see them. My iPhone was looking up into the sun and I could not see what the camera was taking a photo of, just pointing in the general direction as each group of geese (I assume geese) flew by.

Don't ask me how but a few weeks ago my Facebook news feed starting feeding me advertisements for "Muddy Mats", to pick up rain, snow or mud from the paws of hounds and the dogs IF they were to walk on the mats. 

I went to the website of my local pet store where I buy all their food to see if they had the Muddy Matts in their inventory. They did not have that brand name but they did have these. So I did a search for reviews just for that brand name and their 4-star reviews were good enough for me to buy and try. 

I needed to try something for those days of a wet backyard like tomorrow, in trying to control or decrease the amount of wet paws that I have to wipe up with my Bona microfiber mop. 

Of course as I stepped inside they were excited so I dropped them on the floor for the hounds and dogs to check them out. The "doormat" is a 2.5'x3' ... the "runners" are 2.5'x5' ... I have one runner on each side of the love seat to cover both directions they may take once inside. I will continue my review after this weekend.

Henry is checking them out to see if they do what the label said ... absorb 51% more than their competitors, will never leak through the bottom and if the non-skid surface slides on the laminate flooring like it does on the tile in front of the patio. I had to lay the new doormat on top of the old rug in front of the patio door to keep it from siding. These runners stuck to the floor with no problem as the hounds and dogs run over them when coming inside. 

These next four photos were in my blog post last week but they are part of my story now, part of my thought process and part of my brain cell scrambling that took place just yesterday but for most of the day.

We have mild winters here, 20s while we sleep and mid 40s during the day on average ... but not recently with the biggest storm in 15 years as they called it. Then seeing a few days, starting Sunday, to be colder than it was last week when I had no power for four days ... it put my mind back in the mode of those winters of 2015-2018. 

"Im tired of this stuff and I want to move somewhere that has good weather year round with no tornados, no hurricanes, no forest fires and no snow." 

Long time blog readers will know from the past those are dangerous words coming out of my crazy mind at times. This might get interesting. 

I clicked the link to edit my bookmarks. I brought that folder named "Houses4Sale" back to the top on my Favorites Bar, right next to "MySites" in the center of the screen. Inside that folder are my house searches from the past, with a sale price limit and sorted by names of towns or two specific counties ... one in Indiana and one in Arizona.

The town names are classified ... LOL. 

As I clicked on each town, the website (realtor dot com) would automatically update and sort them by the newest listing. Some of my old favorites had come back on the market since they did not sell the first time and had only been listed within the last three days. That threw gas on the fire inside my brain ... houses that I had liked at one time were back for sale.

I knew then ... my day was booked. First I went through my favorite listings to see what had sold. Remember this folder for Houses4Sale had been buried out-of-site in my major Bookmarks listing for a reason. Now it was back on top starring at me every time I sat in front of my computer. 

I also had a couple of new areas to research. Some friends had suggested to me "the high country" in Texas ... good bike riding, hiking a lot of state parks and just far enough from the larger cities. Those two areas now have their own folders to monitor and a couple of houses in those areas saved in my Favorites Folder of houses I am really interested in.

Since I would not pay cash for a house this time, I would have a larger than required downpayment but I would finance some of it. I had to look at Forbes for the current mortgage rates. I always use the term that will be longer than I what I have left on this earth in my estimates ... yesterday that was 7.39%

Some say that is really high interest rates but I remember in 1977 specifically, the mortgage rate was 10% and nobody blinked an eye or complained about it.

Since I didn't want snow and ice in my future that eliminated moving back 100 miles north where I use to live. Yes I have thought about doing that since the time I decided to leave Sierra Vista in December 2019. 

You know how much I loved living in Sierra Vista before the 2020 election results. Today I still love that area of high desert, mountains to see every day, great bicycling and great hiking. Yes it does snow out there a little, especially when you are living at ~4,600 feet elevation but that sun is so hot, the snow is melted away within hours.

My friends in Phoenix suggested I look at small towns north of Phoenix, all the way up to the state line. So with one tab opened to google maps and the other tab open to Realtor I did hours of house searching, going from one small town to another. Everywhere I looked had consistent results. 

• Nothing available for sale within my budget
• Most that was available was pretty beat up and not worth buying
• The lingering question of "what is their water supply like"
• I was seeing too many houses with the above ground large water tanks

After hours of searching I had only added two houses to my Favorites folder from the towns I looked at in Arizona. One from Ajo and one from Ash Fork. 

When I checked that folder this morning, the house in Ajo was already "contingent" or on contract after one day. 

There were a couple of surprises here in Indiana but those areas have harsher winters than I have where I live now. I know because in one area I lived there for 22 years and the other area is where I grew up. In fact one house I was interested in and within my budget was a shocker ... I clicked on the map provide for the location and it was in back of the housing development where I grew up. 

The memory strings were being pulled a little bit on that one because Pendleton Indiana is a great town ... the current photo of the house for sale was sitting in more snow than I have here ... so that 'string' snapped pretty quickly and my brain cells moved back west.

The high speed runs with cars/vans or trucks loaded with illegals is almost non-existent in Sierra Vista now. The sheriff reported last summer there had been 24 deaths in 26 months due to those high speed runs, all 24 were citizens of the town. Things have seemed to calm down and I am waiting for feedback from friends out there with my questions from yesterday. 

When I was looking at houses there in late 2022 after moving here in May 2022, the older houses were being remodeled and sold at a high price. Those prices have seemed to drop about $25,000 in asking price from 2022-2024.

Still those houses are not in the part of town I would want to live. 

So I moved from town to town south of Tucson and all of Cochise County, finding about the same results as I listed above. Out in the country there is not much available that is worth buying within my budget. I had driven thought a lot of those town in eastern Cochise County so I was a little familiar with the areas I was looking at. 

I needed to head out to buy the rugs but needed to stop by my friends house up the street to pick up my glasses that I had left there the night before. We have been friends since college but there is one distinct difference between us.

He loves COLD weather and I love HOT weather.

They have lived here in that same house now for 26 years, I have lived here 4 years this coming May but through four winters. I told him what I had been doing. That did not surprise him. In fact he has an old friend that lives in one of those towns I looked at in the "high country" of Texas. We discussed what we liked about that area. 

He agreed with me when I told him this ... "I am too tired to move again but I hate the thought of what my backyard is going to look like when all this snow melts with the dogs and hounds going inside and outside. Every spring I am rebuilding my yard, now for the 4th time due to damage over the winter months"

There were a few other choice words mingled in that discussion but not printable. 

In closing. I love where I live, this house and yard are perfect for me, the hounds and the dogs. It's a great small city and I do everything here that I did in Sierra Vista. The neighborhood is great with people helping each other when needed. 

Yet ... this kind of weather and and a yard that has flooded for 66 years makes me want to move somewhere else.

The sun is bright today here in "the tropics" of Southern Indiana ... let's see what happens this weekend with the weather.