Anyone get much snow?

[sumdumguy]

I think it was 1974 that we had snow right to the top of second floor eaves of farm house.

White-tails are gonna find it difficult to find food. Those lentil regrowths that were so tasty and nutritious may be pretty far down now.

Milder weather wouldn’t hurt.

[shtferbrains]

My dad contracted to blow snow for the local snowplow club in the early 50's with a JD R and a blower.
No high roads or wings on the big graders.
Some used V plows that basicly worked as snow traps.
Nobody was set up to move snow even to get out of yards in those days.
Snow and cold weather was a lot more than inconvenient.

.

[fjlip]

My dad contracted to blow snow for the local snowplow club in the early 50's with a JD R and a blower.
No high roads or wings on the big graders.
Some used V plows that basicly worked as snow traps.
Nobody was set up to move snow even to get out of yards in those days.
Snow and cold weather was a lot more than inconvenient.

.

Yes Dad and uncles had a snow plow "club" in 50's. Shitty narrow roads, made with a Cat, steep ditches, brush/willows to catch snow ON THE ROAD, V plow made a great catch too. RM did some apparently, just graders. Cat + Sc****r done in 60's, brush gone, last rebuild past our yard in drought of 1988.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

In 1986 we had a snow storm in May(I'm almost certain about the timing, but it seems ubelievable now).
No school for a week. County brought in a big cat to plow our road. To a kid like me, it seems that the drifts were 8 feet tall almost the length of our road. The cat couldn't just drive, he had to back up and push at a slight angle until stalling out, then go the other way, for a full mile of road. Next year the county took all the trees out along our road, so it couldn't drift in like that.

It was a winter wonderland to kid my age. Dad wasn't nearly as impressed though.

[blackpowder]

No clubs here, county did it all back then I believe, and contractors with Cats.
73-74 epic here too. People getting to town on snow machines if they had the money for them.
A lot of roads were brushed and landscaped after that year. A lot of culverts redone.

4-6" of light snow here too.
Feels wetter when ground white.
Shows us it "can".

[bobofthenorth]

Wisdom from my grandfather:

Can't grow a crop on snow.
Never had a crop failure in March

We were gone for a week - got home (Buchanan) late last night. Probably 10" of new fluffy snow but we only ran into it when we got north of Melville. #1 highway was bare all the way from Banff to Regina. Gotta love the new bypass around Regina. I hate that place.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

In my travels, I see other areas with no ditches, just flat roads across the prairie. Do these areas never get snow or wind? Around here, if we plowed the snow off a flat road, and leave it banked up, it would drift full every day for the rest of the winter. All roads have deep ditches, and graders have wings pushing snow off into the ditch so it can't catch snow and drift the road shut.

[WiltonRanch]

In my travels, I see other areas with no ditches, just flat roads across the prairie. Do these areas never get snow or wind? Around here, if we plowed the snow off a flat road, and leave it banked up, it would drift full every day for the rest of the winter. All roads have deep ditches, and graders have wings pushing snow off into the ditch so it can't catch snow and drift the road shut.

In our hills there were lots of roads cut through hills with reasonable backsloping for average snowfall. In my years I have seen enough times where this was less than adequate. Lucky now most travelled roads have been brought up to higher grade and more backslope. Seen enough dozers opening roads going back and forth sideways. Worst I experienced was getting 4wd and dozer stuck after sliding off a road. Had to shovel it out. Took 3 hours and a front end loader digging around it. Got snowed in real bad during calving and couldn’t get out for a week until RM snowblower opened us up and managed to ride horse up to where cat was. Now cat comes home before March cause that is when our chances of these freak snows start. Anything can happen.

[Retired]

IN 1973 /74 winter I ran grader for county the snow was so deep in a lot of places all I could do was open a 1 lane path ,then they put a v plow on a 627 cat buggy and half a load of gravel ,that thing would open up roads at 18mi/hr,but when they hit big drifts they knocked off most of the fence posts.
Only way to see where the fence lines were was if there was trees as the fences were completely burried. Lots of flooding and late seeding in spring.

[Old Cowzilla]

Roads closed in 1968 same way here graders could not wing it out anymore. Narrow path down the middle one morning our school bus started to skid and caught the corner of snow bank and flipped. I still remember all the kids on the one side and the books and lunch kits flew over and landed on the kids on the other side. Bus had road blocked but other bus coming down hiway saw something wrong. Nobody hurt and cat pushed out road later that day. 8 years old but still I remember that like it was yesterday.