Lake Michigan, In Our Driveway

Did any of you get this mess yesterday?  It was dry all day then boom, we got like four or five inches of fluffy snow in a few hours, then – it decided to rain?!?

And not just a little sprinkle, no it was a belt off the aluminum siding, noise making, hard driving rain.

We heard our neighbor out in the night with his little four wheeler plow clearing the cul-de-sacs side walk - in the POURING RAIN (thank you neighbor).

Hubby sat there and thought about it for a bit, should we clean the driveways? (yes, we have two)  Should it be done now or wait until the morning?  Would this confused precipitation continue or would it end at some hour?  

We both concluded that it would be easier to clear the snow with a little ice crust on top (you know something like a Crème-Brule) than it would be to clean ice off the pavement if we moved the snow now and the rain froze.  So he made a dog path and then left the rest.

Oh my goodness, it’s not a nice little ice crusted layer of snow – it is full out slush.  I can barely move the shovel, it weighs a ton – really – a ton!  And it’s a lake, splorsh, splorsh, splorsh every step you take.  A lot of water fell yesterday, it has nowhere to go, the ground is frozen and it’s all just accumulating…

Here’s my concern, we didn’t move the snow when it could still be considered snow, so now it’s just pushing around slushy water, which just slushes back at ya.  It is supposed to be “warm” tomorrow and then it’s going down to 20 degrees the next day (that’s -7 Celsius).  It’s going to be an ice berg nightmare.

Nothing will be flat, everything will be peaky and the standing water is easily and inch and a half deep once you move the slushy bits – try breaking that up once frozen.  

I’m off for another round, my fourth one today.  I like to think I see progress, but really it’s only Lake Michigan I am seeing out my window… a bit chilly for a swim, to shallow for a boat, to warm for ice fishing – what to do, what to do, with our dream house on the water?  Splorsh!

Update - 1/30, see - the water had no where to go, it's two inches deep on the lawn....