There’s a rain storm around the corner. I wonder how my roof will handle all that heavy water-logged snow.
It’s the same thing every year. The timing changes now and then, but it’s been relatively consistent the past few seasons. In early December, Maine will get inundated with snow. It’ll be bitterly cold for a few days/weeks and then the temperatures will warm right up. Around mid-December/Christmas, the rain will arrive and transform the entire landscape into slush. And then the temps will drop to freeze all that slush into place – for the duration of the winter. We’ve dubbed this “the hard candy shell” that’ll take half the year to disappear. If the cold would just arrive and stay. I ask myself why that doesn’t happen more often. If the cold would just arrive and stay…life would be so much easier.
Our roof can hold a few feet of snow with no issues. I can’t say I’ve tested that claim on purpose by any measure. It’s just happened. One snow storm and then another. It piles up and gets deeper and when I get around to looking at the situation outside and upward, there we have it – a few feet of snow on the roof. Since we live in a post and beam house, I’m not concerned with it collapsing. If we were to add two full days of rain to that snow – well, that’d be another story entirely. I’m sure we’d hear groans and creeks until we’d be lying in bed with lumber and plywood covering our shivering bodies. With the rain and wind forecast for this weekend, I’d rather not wake up under a pile of lumber. Not that we have multiple feet of snow on the roof or anything, but I could just imagine how much what we do have would weigh, being water soaked and all. Actually, perhaps I’d rather not think of that.
The answer is to clear as much snow off the roof as humanly possible. And in order to do that, I use my roof rake. Not a shovel, mind you, a rake. I suppose that name was given because we pull the snow from the roof, not stand above it and dig into it. We pull it from the roof.
If you’ll notice, the “shovel” part of the roof rake is attached to a long pole. Pull the pole, pull the snow. It works wonders, unless of course the snow is wet, sticky, semi-frozen slush, or just downright deep. It’ll always do the job, but with the differing conditions, the levels of exhaustion will change. Every condition exhausts me every time, but fluffy powder is the best to deal with. Through the years, I’ve completed this particular chore during a night, during snow storms, during rain storms, during wind storms, during just about any type of storm or miserable condition you can think of. I don’t look forward to it. It’s a horrible job compounded by the fact that I don’t have the luxury of traversing the land around the house on grass. There’s usually the snow on the ground to contend with. Did I mention that the entire ordeal is exhausting? If I haven’t, it is. The small sections of roof aren’t bad, but the big ones…ugh.
This type of winter activity isn’t isolated to Maine or even northern New England. We experienced a storm while living in Connecticut that blessed us with nearly three feet. I remember it well. There were people selling roof rakes on the corners of intersections, price gouging in hardware stores for the same. Brothers, uncles, and cousins were advertising their muscle to climb on rooftops to shovel until the weight dissipated and danger disappeared. I actually owned a house while living in Connecticut that was almost twice as large as the one I own now. I never did shovel that roof. Or rake it. It never caved in either. Hmmm… What it did have was an extremely steep pitch and maybe that helped in some way.
It’s all good though. It may sound as if I’m complaining and that may stem from the fact that the muscles in my upper body feel like rubber from raking for half the day. I ask myself sometimes, “What would I rather be doing?” I get bored easily and if I were to run from it all to sit on a warm sunny beach, I’d last not more than a half hour. If I were to drive racecars or sail ships…I’m not sure that would make me happy. Do you know what makes me happy? It’s like I tell my father. I need to fight the fight. To me, weather and cold are part of the fight. I need to be challenged and to win. While I’m able, I plan on beating the forest for the firewood, the snow for the path, and everything else for the good people and good times. The climate in which I live certainly does offer its challenges, but the hills, valleys, lakes, and streams make it all so very worth it.
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