This is the first time I’ve written two blogs in one month, but it’s Leap Day, so why not? I posted Fabulous February on Groundhog Day, a celebration of this much-maligned month. It was an idea I’d tossed around for a while, and 2024 seemed like a good year to finally do it. This is a leap year, plus the Chinese Year of the Dragon began in February. As I was working on the the blog I had no idea that February 2024 would turn out to be memorable for another reason altogether. The month would begin with a huge snowstorm I dubbed the Great Groundhog Day Dump.

On February 2nd a nor’easter stalled offshore and began dumping heavy, wet snow on Cape Breton. And it kept dumping heavy, wet snow on Cape Breton for the next three days. We were buried. This is not the light fluffy flakes that powder skiers dream of – it is very fine, wet, and so densely packed it’s hard to move. It is also hard to measure.

I kept shoveling my deck throughout the storm, finding it hard to move even 20 cm of the white stuff. I record our weather, including snowfall and rainfall amounts, so I measured snow depth every time I shoveled. I also left a couple of blocks untouched so I could verify the accumulation. But the snow was compacting so rapidly under its own weight that those blocks were shrinking even while it was still snowing. I estimate I got 90 cm, or 3 ft, of snow (on top of ~18″ already on the ground). It was wet and finely textured and temperatures were mild, so it compacted into a dense 2′ deep layer covering everything. (Like many a Canuck of a certain age, I switch between metric and imperial units somewhat randomly.)

And we got off lucky. Sydney and environs got a whopping 5 ft (1.5 m) of snow in places. Short people and children could vanish! Drifts were double that and more, not to mention massive plow banks. Chaos ensued. Cape Breton shut down for the week. No school, no transit, and many stores stayed closed. The police begged people to stay home. Those who ventured out got stuck and left their vehicles strewn along the road, hindering clearing efforts. Even snowplows were getting stuck. Or breaking down. Or both.

Cape Breton is a snowy place and it’s not unusual to have deep snow in February, but it is unusual for so much to fall all at once. We get a lot of our snow from nor’easters: low-pressure systems formed when cold continental air carried on the jet stream meets warm Gulf-stream air off the east coast. The moisture-laden system tracks northeasterly and counter-clockwise winds dump copious amounts of precipitation on the eastern seaboard. Once the system arrives southeast of Cape Breton, we get lots of heavy snow – often 1-2 feet. Then the system continues on its merry northeast trajectory and dumps on Newfoundland. But this particular nor’easter got derailed. It somehow slipped off the jet stream and stalled just offshore. It kept churning in circles and dumping snow for days.

A historic winter storm deserves a name, but nothing really stuck. Snowmaggedon and its counterpart, Snowpocalypse, were invoked and certainly fit, but neither is original. I heard Frigid Fiona (after Hurricane Fiona) but that’s not quite right because it wasn’t very cold – which was part of the problem. I dubbed it the Great Groundhog Day Dump, which makes the date easy to remember, but that’s not quite right either. Yes, the storm started on Groundhog Day, but it lasted much longer than a day, which was also part of the problem.

The snow finally eased up on February 5th, but we still had to dig out. I was snowbound for a week. Not trapped inside my house (although this happened to a number of people whose doors were blocked by snow) because I (cleverly) have doors that open in and are protected by overhangs. But my vehicle was trapped for a week, even though I had (again, cleverly) parked down at the road ahead of the storm. I have a long driveway, some 350 m., so once the snow gets deep I snowshoe in and out rather than trying to keep it plowed.

With so much snow I feared I’d sink in to my thighs if I waited to break trail so I started while it was still snowing on Saturday. The snow was an odd consistency and I was bogging down unevenly. Down to my knees and then to my ankles and then to my shins, leaving tracks of all different depths instead of a level trail. I didn’t get far before I retreated.

Sunday I was too busy shoveling to snowshoe, but on Monday I tried again. A moose had plowed through the snowbank onto my driveway and punched a meandering set of deep holes into the drive. I was skirting moose holes and my own uneven tracks and still sinking in to different depths. My poles would be there for balance and then vanish into the void. I made it about 1/4 of the way to the road before I gave up. Between the moose and me my trail was an utter mess of uneven holes.

Tuesday came and try, try again. My driveway was dreadful so I climbed 2 feet up onto the bank. I was still sinking in but evenly – better! Moose had plowed a few trenches through the bank so I had to leap across the gaps – exciting! I got halfway to the road – progress!

Later that day I was outside fetching firewood and heard the beep-beep-beep of a reversing vehicle. It sounded like it was right at the bottom of my driveway. Could someone be clearing around my vehicle? Intrigued and motivated, I set out yet again, maneuvering through the obstacle course of pitfalls. And so, four days in and on my fourth attempt, I finally made it to the road. My vehicle was encased in snow, barely visible. But the road in front of it had been cleared – exciting!

The beeping machine had moved farther down the road. It was a front loader, clearing a lane along our side road four days after the storm began. Usually the county plow gets to us within a day or two of a snowfall, but this time the plows skipped side roads. It was a Herculean effort just to keep one lane passable on main roads like the Cabot Trail. So our little road filled with snow until it was too deep and heavy to be plowed. It took a front loader to do the job. Push snow with the bucket, lift and roll the load against the side of the road. Reverse – beep-beep-beep – and repeat. It was very slow going, but buddy was getting ‘er done, one bucket-load at a time.

I was strangely elated to see that front loader slowly clearing our road. I wished I’d arrived a few minutes earlier so I could wave and grin and shout my thanks to the driver. But I doubted he’d appreciate an idiotic pedestrian standing behind him when he went beep-beep-beep into reverse.

On Wednesday the temperatures plummeted. My driveway, a mess of uneven holes, turned into a frozen mess of uneven holes. I realized that my earlier forays had been folly. Had I just waited I could’ve snowshoed out on top of the snow. Sometimes procrastination pays. And hindsight is always 20/20.

My own rig was still encased in snow, almost invisible. I’d parked as far back as I could to accommodate plowing, so there was some 15 feet of 2′ deep compacted snow between my rig and the road. On the plus side, standing atop that snow in my snowshoes meant I could actually reach the roof of my vehicle. It still took over half an hour to clear the roof and hood. Then I took off my snowshoes and walked down the road to visit my neighbour and share storm stories.

A couple of days later I got a call from that same neighbour. Unasked and unbeknownst to me, he spent almost 3 hours clearing the snow around my vehicle by hand, using a scoop. My back hurt just thinking about it. So, eight days after I’d parked at the road, I was free! I snowshoed out and went for a drive. Not far, just a kilometre down the road to thank my neighbour for his hard work and kindness.

And that’s Cape Breton all over. Weather can be challenging here, but people step up and help out. This storm was especially difficult. The snow was too deep and heavy to move with a regular truck-plow setup – it required tractors with snow-blower attachments, bulldozers, front loaders – heavy equipment. Operators, public and private, went non-stop trying to clear roads and driveways, but couldn’t keep up. And equipment kept breaking down. Or getting stuck.

But people pulled together. Hats off to the people who worked endless hours to clear snow. Neighbours helped neighbours, digging out doorways blocked by deep snow, clearing driveways and cars, snowshoeing or snowmobiling in to the housebound with food, medicine, and company. Local CBC radio programs gave us information and a feeling of connection, even in our individual isolation.

Cape Bretoners are renowned for their hospitality, hard work and helpfulness. I have always been helped out my neighbours, from my first winter house-sitting ‘down north’ near Bay St. Lawrence to my years here in the Holler. I didn’t ask my neighbour for help, but he saw a need and got ‘er done.

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After freeze up the snowshoeing was great. I did a few fun forays and discovered that Yellowbird, a ramshackle cabin that was on my land when I bought it, had finally collapsed under the weight of the snow. I also saw 3′ deep trenches through the snowy woods, plowed by meandering moose. Snow this deep is a challenge even for these long-legged beasts.

In the end I was storm-stayed for a week but that was fine. I’m a somewhat solitary animal anyhow and had plenty of food because I always stock up for winter. The less I have to haul in by sled, the better. During the yurt years I had to haul everything in, including drinking water. I didn’t have running water or storage space, and the yurt would freeze on cold nights. I wonder how I did it. Winter in my cabin is comparatively easier, but still a challenge. Of course, I’m also older. In fact, it seems I am getting older every year.

I marked a birthday in February, one of the reasons I’m fond of this month. And now, writing on Leap Day, I must say that February 2024 was a doozy. It started with the Great Groundhog Day Dump. We were still digging out when it warmed up and dumped 84 mm of rain on all that snow, followed by a hard freeze. One day I was snowshoeing on and around the banks of the pond. The next day everywhere I’d been was under water as the pond rose to flood levels. And today, on Leap Day, we mark the exit of this marvelous month with crazy mild temperatures, rapid melting, rain and gusty south winds – all to be followed by a rapid hard freeze and then snow squalls to welcome in the month of March. Never a dull moment here in the Holler.

Sue McKay Miller
February 29th, 2024

p.s. I wrote this on Leap Day but didn’t post it until March 1st. Happy St. David’s Day! (It’s a Welsh thing.)