Record Breaking

 Last night was tough. Every three hours from 6:00 pm until 6:00 am I would wake up, walk down the basement steps, turn on the water for the barn then walk back up, set the timer for 10 minutes and then fill the wood burners with wood. After the timer went off it was back down the stairs to turn the water off to the barn then back upstairs and into bed. It worked though when I went out at first light all of the horses had water and none of them were thirsty. Valiant's waterer only had an inch of water in it so that was refilled by carrying a bucket of water from the barn to his paddock. The hydrant by his paddock is now frozen. I went out two more times to fill his waterer. The best part about this bad situation is the heater is working in his automatic waterer so as long as I fill the reservoir he has warm water to drink. The other waterers will fill up in about 3 minutes when I turn the water on. It was -9 when we woke up and stayed there until about 11:00 am then slowly crept up. Almost every time we were outside today it was below zero. Right now it is -1 so it IS warming up. AND there are blizzard warnings out. Not for us though.  All of the family that drove down to Gulf Shores Alabama to escape this winter weather were in for a BIG surprise. They are living through a blizzard. There is currently 7 inches of snow on the ground and it is predicted to keep snowing until after 10:00 pm. This is a 130 year old record breaking snow. Below is one of Rachel's balconies.

Pictures and videos have been coming in from them all. 

Rachel sent the picture below of making snow ice cream.

Diane sent the video below:

Mike sent the video below. This is at Beth's condo.

All the bridges are now closed. They couldn't get off of that Island if they wanted to. There are no snow shovels available but people have those little shovels the kids dig in the sand with. 

They may be able to dig their way out of this blizzard but with that little shovel it's going to take a while OR just wait for it to warm up. 

Here we have kept both wood burners going all day. Even with them going strong we can't get the house up past 74 degrees. We took supper over to mom's tonight and while eating Karin asked, "does it feel cold in here?" Sure enough their furnace wasn't working. It was set on 74 but down to 64. They have the propane heater going in the living room so didn't notice that the rest of the house was getting cold. Mark tried to get it going but ended up calling Philip. He can't get there until after 9:00 pm tonight. I'm sure Philip is exhausted from no heat calls. Hope this one is simple. On the way home from mom's we stopped at Valiant's paddock to check his water and it was only down an inch. I'll bring water up from the house about 10:00 pm then not again until morning. The frigid air sure makes for hard work but I'm thankful I have a down filled warm coat and water available.