Hey folks, figured I'd check in. We've had a week from hell up here, to put it mildly. I'm in the Southwest corner of North Dakota, so we're getting hit with everything right now.
Starting last week Friday, we got up into the 50's, so our 4 feet of snow started to really melt down. I found out the hard way that you shouldn't build your corrals higher than your house. It was fun explaining to the wife why the water running through our lawn was brown. By Sunday a majority of the snow was gone, we had creeks going over their banks, and the dams were overflowing.
Monday mother nature decided that we had had enough of the good life. They were forecasting between 10-24 inches of snow for our area. I left work at 3:30 in a sleet/hail storm that dropped around an inch of ice on teh roads. Barely got home, had time to throw a newborn in the barn, and walked outside and the storm broke. We ended up with around 12 inches of snow that night with 40mph winds. At best the snow was 12 inches deep, with a couple drifts that literally covered buildings, fences, and our hay pile. Like JIT, I thought we might be able to sneak through the year with our hay supply. As of right now we have enough to last us until Saturday.
Tuesday and Wednesday the entire state of North Dakota was shut down. In my part of the state it took 2 days to dig out from the blizzard. 100 miles to the east in Bismarck, they were battling the Missouri River flooding, and then got hit with the same blizzard on top of it. Even farther, Fargo and Grand Forks are fighting with the Red River flooding, and if you go 100 miles west of my house to the ND/MT border, they're still in a drought and haven't gotten a drop of snow to this point.
To top things off, we're under another blizzard warning for tomorrow and Monday, another 8-14 inches is expected. If we still have snow on the ground on April 15th, we'll officially have gone 6 months with snow on the ground up here. So far calving is still plugging along though and we're about half way through with only losing 1 calf. Not to shabby really!
At this stage, I'm expecting the Red River to turn to blood and a plague of locusts or frogs to start dropping on us. I'm a little concerned sicne I'm the first born in our family
