Thought It Would Work

At some point in the middle of last night it ended up snowing around here. It wasn't much - no more than two or three inches and it was the light, fluffy kind that falls when it is really cold out. At first I wasn't even going to shovel it away (while my neighbor brought out his increasingly-annoying snow blower first thing in the morning), but apparently we are getting another round of snow tonight and new snow on top of old snow is just a bad deal. That is when it gets really slippery. Anyway, because it was so little snow I wanted to try something different in an attempt to get out of shovelling. (Something about having to shovel when there are less than four inches of snow drives me crazy. I'd rather it be a foot.) I always saw the guys at the stadium break out with the leaf blowers when it was this kind of light snow and thought I would give it a try. I mean, if I could just stand around while swinging my hand back and forth to clear the driveway it would make things so much easier. I had planned to try this earlier and I figured that between the amount and kind of snow, if it was ever going to work, this was it.

Alas, it was not meant to be. While I was able to move the snow with the leaf blower, it was just going to take way too long. There was just enough snow that it would require swiping over the same spot several times and making the entire process take way too much time. Also, in a couple locations I have to move the snow several feet and if it was taking this long to do one spot with three inches of snow I can't imagine how long it would have taken to move once the snow started piling up. For those of you that are looking to try using a leaf blower to get rid of their snow, I'm here to tell you that it will only work on less than two inches of snow. Any more than that and it will be too much for the blower to clear easily unless you're using an extremely high-powered model.

So, while this method didn't work, I am not giving up experimenting for a better system for clearing a small amount of snow from the driveway (there is only one way to clear a lot of snow and I already know that one). What I am looking for is something that will make clearing the snow off of my driveway easier, but also faster. I'd rather shovel hard for fifteen minutes than stand in the cold for thirty - I don't care how physically easy the thirty minute technique is. Something tells me that I'm going to have a few more chances to work on this before winter is over.