I was surprised I got my snow blower to start. We didn't get much snow but it's a little drifted, due to the strong winds. I figured a few minutes with the snow blower beats the amount of time it would have taken me to use the shovel.

I've seen predictions from -11 to -25 actual air temperatures for tonight through noon, tomorrow. We are in the middle of preparing for my Mom's memorial service so I have to go out, tomorrow. Today I'm hunkering down with the cats, some good food and a fire in the fireplace.

I keep telling myself that as awful as I think this winter is, it doesn't hold a candle to last winter, which was record breaking on every level and totally brutal.

I will keep you in my thoughts.

I don't think last winter was this bad - you really do? I'm not sure where you live, so maybe it was. I'm in NH; it wasn't overally brutal last year. This year is making up for it and my snowblower crapped out. Backup plan is my neighbor's son blowing out the driveway but their snowblower crapped out too.

Sorry to hear about your Mom. Camping out seems to be the prescription for the weekend.

Last year we had record snowfall, record cold temps and I went a week without power, at Christmas, due to an ice storm. I've never seen so many school cancelations. The cold even affected a lot of the flower trees and bushes. I had about 2 blooms on my forsythia bushes and zero fruit on my apple and pear trees. We didn't have a late frost, so the only thing I could think was the trees and bushes were in shock. My daffs were very late in blooming and they even had to delay opening the new Flint Farmer's Market for about a month because the ground was frozen for so long, they couldn't complete construction in time for the scheduled opening.

This year we really haven't had a lot of snow and this week has been the worst, for cold. I keep hoping for an early Spring.