Willow Street, shortly after 7 a.m. May 2. That’s my house on the right.
YOU WOULD GUESS, walking my neighborhood this morning, that this is March instead of May. I am living in a winter wonderland, if you want to put a positive spin on the fresh snow blanketing the landscape.
Our measurements showed seven inches. I expect we got closer to a a foot of snow since it began falling Wednesday afternoon.
An unofficial seven inches of snow have fallen here by measurement of the yardstick my husband thrust into the snow this morning. I expect we got more like 12 inches as much melted upon hitting the ground. I believe the old record for this date in Minnesota was three inches in 1946.
Owatonna, 15 miles to the south got 13 inches in this storm. Falling snow limited the time I spent outdoors with my camera this morning.
Schools are closed.
My husband blowing out our driveway.
It’s a mess out there.
A limb broke off my neighbor’s tree around 6 a.m., striking her house and then smashing onto her car, breaking the windshield. In this photo my husband had already sawed a portion of the limb off. We then pulled this remaining limb from her car so she could move it, before another limb fell.
Branches are down all over, including at my neighbor’s house across the street.
Look to the upper left in this photo and you’ll see one particular limb broken off and looming over my neighbor’s yard.
This shows the intersection right by my house and my husband blowing snow. Note the sagging utility lines.
Branches are broken and littering yards. Power lines are sagging from the weight of the heavy wet snow.
I opened the garage door this morning to this scene.
Cars are buried in driveways and residents are slogging through the snow with snowblowers.
Clearing our snow-covered driveway.
Our snowy backyard.
Note, again, the sagging power lines in this shot taken from my backyard looking toward my neighbor’s house across Willow Street.
Need I say more.
I want out.
JUST AS I WAS WRAPPING up this post, the snowplow barreled past my house, throwing the snow with such force that it blasted the side of our house and the bedroom window. I checked the window and it doesn’t appear to be broken.
UPDATE 3:55 P.M.: Tree service removal trucks and the buzz of chain saws have frequented my neighborhood this afternoon as clean up begins after the storm.
A tree service company arrived at my neighbor’s house across the street this afternoon to remove dangling limbs. That’s her car with the smashed windshield to the left in this photo. See my earlier photo of the car (above) when parked in her driveway this morning. The limb crashed onto her car at about 6 a.m.
Directly across Willow Street from my home, another neighbor had to deal with fallen branches and limbs in his yard.
A City of Faribault snowplow driver and a Thompson Tree Service worker confer along Willow Street this morning.
Copyright 2013 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Minnesota Prairie Roots 
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