And still it’s snowing…

Winter has certainly come in like a lion this year. The snow started on the evening of November 6, and as I write this, we have literally had two days where it hasn’t snowed or rained since. That’s 20 days. In those 20 days, we have had 40cm of snow, some of which has melted and then more has come in on top of that.

There’s still puddles of water under some of the snow. In other spots it’s now compacted and icy underneath. And still it comes down. Currently, we are in the middle of what they are calling an Orange Alert for a winter storm warning. Yesterday, the predicted snow was 11cm, today, 15cm, tomorrow 4cm.

On the radio, they’re calling for a total of 60cm (roughly 2ft) of snow by the end of this storm, which should leave by Monday. It will have been snowing for almost a month solid.

Now, we aren’t surprised that it’s snowing or that there is snow. It is Northern Ontario, after all, and it is close to December. However, the sheer volume of snow and it’s consistent falling are quite something.

It hinders our daily work to finish the build out on the camper, and, even worse, it dulls the sun so badly that nothing is getting much of a charge from the sun. This means we can’t charge cellphones. We can’t run Starlink. And with no actual cellphone signal here, we are effectively cut off from communication. Add a lack of charge on the phones, and it feels particularly isolating.

We can’t film, as it’s too cold for the phones and cameras, and we have no way of protecting them from snow and rain outside. And even if we could film, we don’t have enough power to run Starlink long enough to upload a video.

We’ve taken to working as much as we can and then Sandy takes the Bluetti power station to the truck to plug it in to charge a little off the truck battery (with the truck running, so that it doesn’t just drain the battery). It’s an arduous processes, and doesn’t yeild a ton of charge, but it gives us a little. Enough to charge cell phones, and to turn on Starlink for about 5 minutes a day.

But despite this, we are still motivated, still forging ahead and still managing to keep our spirits up, despite the enormous amount of snow and other set backs.