Yesterday the island received 8-10" of snow, depending on drifting. So that morning, I decided not to go to church and just work online, have a leisurely breakfast and enjoy watching the snow from the in front of the woodstove. Around 9:30, the snowfall thickened. I looked across the lane to the Corvair, covered with snow and a sort of sheen underneath it. How pretty, I thought.
I picked up a pair of binoculars and saw what caused the sheen - it was seawater!
I scanned the cove and realized that we had a wicked high tide. I thought about the huge full moon of last night, before the storm, and quickly went back online to my tide chart page. Holy *** - high tide was not for another hour and the height was extreme, 11.5 feet instead of the usual 9 feet. So much for relaxing.
Now I had to shovel out the Corvair , uncover it, start it [it has sat for the better part of this week], warm it up, and try and reverse it away from the water. The plows have not come yet so there was no other place to put it on the lane. Naturally, the seawater had mixed with the snow and frozen nice and slick. The car would not move very far.
So I went to the cellar when I store a tote of woodstove ash just for occasions like this, and spread some out underneath the rear wheels. That did the trick and I backed the car uphill just enough to avoid the water and yet not be in the way of the plow [there are no plows out yet anyway].
Just another complication of island living. Glad I didn't have to call FEMA.
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