We got a bunch of sleet-ice-rain on Tuesday. It rained (sleeted) all day, got about an inch of "rain" before it changed to snow on Tuesday evening.
Since then, we've had about 18" of heavy, wet snow. But it's really the bottom layer of ice that is causing havoc.
The storm was originally forcasted to be over by this morning (thursday), however NWS changed it until tomorrow morning (friday).
Now for my scrapbook of shame picture.
I was using my new snowblower yesterday and did 2 really stupid things.
The first one was rotating the chute in the same direction for more than 360 degrees. The chute can spin that way no problem. However, the hydraulic lines going to the deflector control prevents it. And, yup, I "cable wrapped" (old AFSATCOM term) the hydraulic lines. I heard a pop and the chute stopped rotating. Thinking the worst (because it's me), I pulled it into the heated garage to look things over. To my surprise, damage was minimal, the hoses came loose from their anchor stay and the hydraulic gear box that spins the chute was pushed back on it's mounting bolts far enough that the ring gear on the chute no longer made contact with the drive gear on the hydraulic gear box.
The fix for that one was simple and I was amazed at how lucky I was not to damage anything else (other than putting a serious fray on the outer layer on my hydraulic hoses (no leaks though).
After getting back in action, one of the last places to blow snow was my back yard. I like to clear a path for the dogs to run and play (involves playing catch with a ball that they lose in the snow).
So I'm clearing a path of snow up to my 10' backyard gate, and I did the eternally stupid thing of getting to close to my gate. The ice breaker tab on the main auger grabbed the chain link fence portion of one half of my gate. I'll tell you, it snatched that fence panel out of the gate frame faster than you could blink and eye. Like yanking the table cloth off of a table and leaving the plates on the table. The frame of the gate is still fine, but that fence panel in the gate did not fair so well.
I shut the pto off as soon as I saw it go, but obviously it was too late to save the gate.
Back to the heated garage I go (again) and took me about an hour to cut the fence material out of my auger. Using my air powered cut off grinder I was able to cut it all out.
The aftermath:
I've only got a couple of hours on this new blower, but so far, I'm a menace to all on this thing.
I'm kind of surprised it didn't pop a shear pin. After it was all pulled out, the blower ran fine again. This blower so far has been "me tough", which has been fortunate.