Ryan McFarland

On Friday the forecast for the weekend weather set us up for more snow with warmer temperatures starting on Monday.  By Wednesday it was supposed to be raining.  I called my supervisor and told him that i would probably be taking Monday off to shovel roofs.  I did and it was a good thing.

At first i only intended to shovel the carport roof. You can see that there is about 4 feet of snow.  We really can’t afford to have that roof collapse onto the car with that amount of snow absorbing water from the rain and warmer temperature.  I happened to notice that the beam that supports the porch roof rafters had succumbed to the weight of the snow already.

That beam in the center of the picture running off to the end of the porch used to sit level on top of the 4×4 posts.  Because the rafters do not have “birds mouth” notches in them the weight of the snow forced the beam to roll.  This put the posts in danger of tipping in toward the house and dropping the porch roof.  We decided to shovel the porch roof too.  I fell off of it three times while trying to clear most of the heavy snow and two inches of ice off of it.  While pushing snow off of the edge the ice i was standing on broke free and the plastic surface offers no change of recovering your balance once gravity takes over.  Fortunately there is a large pile of snow below.   We shoveled all morning - until 1 PM.

Now we’re thinking that we should probably rebuild the porch roof this spring.  My hands are raw and i can feel blisters forming.  I know other people have been out shoveling for days so i can empathize.  Here are some pictures of the snow accumulation from earlier in the week.  I should take a few pictures of the snow piles now - where we shoveled it off the carport roof the snow is higher than the roof is.