In the Spindrift Snow Squalls

 Enough snow fell overnight and yesterday that we had to go out and shovel in the midst of spindrift snow squalls. It was very cold and unearthly beautiful with pink clouds above Hex Mountain temporarily shaded as the wind blew great clouds of fresh snow across the mountain sides and then down onto us, blotting out the light temporarily. The world turned from sunshine on clouds and a little blue sky to dark grey and zero visibility in a few seconds. 

Memo to self. Stay out of avalanche zones.

We were completely coated in snow in a couple of minutes; literally, just that long. We kept digging the car out as we needed to check out how bad the road was down to Old Number 3 as my daughter waited at her brother's home in Kent for Snoqualmie Pass to open.

We got out because the snowplow guy came by yesterday and cleared our driveway and the road well enough for us to reach Old Number 3 to get a fish and chips dinner. We were also scouting out the road to see if Elizabeth could get home. The driveway and development were good enough but the main road had high levels of icing sugar snow, all churned up and unpleasant. My car did just great but it was not likely that Elizabeth's Jeep with its current set of tires would manage.

So she ended up in Cle Elum in a hotel late at night after nearly four hours  of the evening getting across Snoqualmie Pass which was bumper to bumper and with chain checks, which her four-wheel drive Jeep passed.

It's another grimly cold day so I waded through knee-high snow to put out a fresh block of suet for the blue jays. We have already put out three sets of fresh suet for the chickadees right by the lower level of the cabin to avoid window strikes. One chickadee literally flew over from the larch as soon as I went outside and three of them clustered around me on the ground waiting for me to spread out the clumps. I was able to give one a nice little nugget right off my finger. It flew off immediately to either eat its goody or hide it. The rest helped themselves and for a bit I stood inside and chased off the blue jays who noticed that I'd put out suet by the house. There are a large number of blue jays feeding from the fresh block but I also saw, to my delight, that the flicker arrived and had a good feed while the blue jays clustered around and waited for their turn again.

It is snowing steadily again, after a foot or more arrived yesterday. The storms are arriving one after the other, which is unusual and unwelcome. Nothing to be done about it but dig out each time and keep the birds fed.