CoolHandMike

Story time because I need to put this down somewhere.

Beautiful day outside, time for some early spring yardwork on our new house. I decided to try some stump removal for a bush I cut down last weekend. I'm guessing it had to be original to the house (30-ish years old) because the stratigraphy in that part of the yard is pretty interesting. From top to bottom: old mulch, red 3/4 stones, landscape fabric, large round stones, small river rocks, more landscape fabric, and then clean fill. The ginormous root cluster is oblong, about 1' x 6" and consists of multiple stumps fused together at the base. The cluster started just beneath the top landscape fabric and continues down and sideways throughout all the other layers.

I think it's osage, judging by how dense the wood is and the color of the root bark. Digging around the cluster is frustrating because of all the rocks, fabrics, and dense-ass roots. Loppers can only get through the smallest; there are multiple 2-3" thick roots shooting off into the depths. I don't want to use my chainsaw to simply cut the stumps below grade because of all the rocks, and I have no way to pull it out.

One trip to Harbor Freight and $40 later, I'm the proud new owner of a reciprocating saw. Which gummed up almost immediately. After repeatedly clearing the blade and attacking the stump from different angles, and actually getting some of the offending roots out of the way, I thought perhaps I had cleared enough dirt and rock to make some exploratory cuts with the chainsaw. I did manage to cut the cluster in half vertically with no issues, but I got greedy and tried to cut some more. Hit a rock and dulled the chain immediately thereafter. Great.

So half the cluster is out, I've got a giant pit in my back yard, and my right arm, which I thought had recovered from a recent injury is starting to tighten up again, so I think I'm done for the day. Bush: 1 Me: 0

The sucky part about all of this is that there is another stump just like this on the other side of my house. I might have to start getting inventive. I've got a whole woodshop full of tools, hmm... Maybe removing some material with a large wood boring bit might help... Oh yeah, I'm also going to have to put something over the hole for all that rain we're supposedly getting tomorrow. Dang. Still, a hella nice day to be outside, yardwork frustration notwithstanding. Anyway, thanks for reading.

34mph gust imby! Yowza.

Huge sleet, like almost pea-sized, just fell across parts of central Berks.

That was super pleasant to wake up to. There's now just a light frosting of snow on the grass, and there's still a tiny remnant of one of the snowbergs in my cul-de-sac, so that totally counts for snow-on-snow x6 for the season. I though it was supposed to come later in the day; glad I didn't miss it!

Rain/snow at 37.9°/28.4°F here. 

22 hours ago, LVwxHistorian said:

when was that hail, may 2010??

2009. A swath of ice-cube-sized hail swept through Oxford, PA. I remember watching it smashing up all the cars in the Redner's parking lot from inside the grocery store's entryway, ours included. Luckily none of our glass was broken, but the first estimate for repairs actually totaled the car until the shop readjusted the estimate slightly. Was something like ~$5k worth of damage.

That was my first winter back in PA after leaving for the service in '95. I brought back my wife, who was born and raised in SoCal. I recall telling her something along the lines of: "No worries babe, it doesn't snow all that much, maybe once every few years we get something meaningful, but usually winters are completely manageable." So that was her first taste of PA winter weather, ha!

Also worthy of note, after we moved back in May '09, her car was nearly totaled by hail, she caught poison ivy so bad that both of her arms were in bandages for weeks, she fell on the ice and nearly broke her butt in December, and then we got those back-to-back snowstorms in January and February. It felt almost as if PA was actively trying to maim/kill her.

She's since grown to love the climate here though. Turned into a total weenie.

Had a low of 29.3°F this morning, but already up to 45. Might be nice to open some windows a crack for some fresh air later on today.

Yeah it's 43.1 here. My snow looks like it has dimples.

43 minutes ago, Birds~69 said:

Imagine tomorrow w/the highs 50F+ and sun. Lord have mercy on any snow pack....

It'll be interesting to see how much ours melts. We've still got over 18" of snow in parts of the yard and the snow-bergs on my street are upwards of 4' high in places. On the plus side, maybe it'll help with the huge-mongous ice dam situation I've got going on. The front of my house only gets maybe a few hours of afternoon sun.

I think it sleeted for a few minutes but now appears to be clearing up. Measured just over 4.5" on the front porch.

Snow just switched to being very sparse with tiny flakes.

8 minutes ago, Ej257 snow lover said:

Do you think the returns just east of Pittsburgh will hold together as it crosses Pa? 

Kinda doubt it; just from experience, we hardly ever get the back end, wrap-around precip to hold together on these types of events. But I'm no expert.

10 minutes ago, RedSky said:

I desperately need a burst or this is going to leave me at the altar with 49" on the season

 

I think this will put me over 45" for the winter, with 38" of that in February alone. Couldn't have asked for a better, snowy winter especially after last year.

Very nearly 4.5" on my front porch. Temp up to 31.2°F and moderate snow. small to medium-sized flakes.

Back edge of the precip shield is already approaching Harrisburg. Might get another two hours out of this at the most where I'm at. Nice little event, this.

Whoah. Now at 3.5" on the front porch. Must have been snowing at ~2"/hr rates for the past half hour or so! 30.2°F and visibility around 2/10 of a mile if I had to guess. It's been really small flakes most of the morning but now some bigger ones are starting to mix in. Already hearing one snowblower going.

30.3°F and heavy snow. Measured about 2.25" on the front porch.

Dang. Now that the driveway is coated, I'm hoping for another couple of inches to justify wheeling out the snowblower one more time. I'd much prefer using that than shoveling.

30.5°F now and blacktop starting to whiten with moderate to heavy fine snow.

Ok now down to 31.6°F with the sidewalk juuust starting to turn white. Snowing moderately now. Loving this winter.

32.3°F and light, fine snow in Reading. Temp has lowly risen from 30 at 6 am, hoping it gets back under freezing soon. Nothing sticking to roads/sidewalk yet.

Light snow and 28.2° F. A nice coating of fluff. Debating shoveling the driveway and front walk. Ran out of rock salt last night though so I need to get to the hardware store at some point today. The blacktop on my street is covered though so maybe I'll wait a little while longer.

17 minutes ago, Ralph Wiggum said:

The coastal didn't even form yet 

I guess I'm struggling to see how "the coastal" is going to bring much more precipitation to our region. Is the predicted precip tonight going to be from that? To my untrained eye it looks like the center of low pressure will be far offshore by then as opposed to the last storm where it was much deeper and hugged the shore quite a bit longer.

HRRR says more development later in the day though. Maybe some snow TV to close out the day?