This is the snow that tends to blow when you live in the House That Jack Built

The house we purchased in 1998 is very unique, which is why we fell in love with it in the first place.  It's a former farm (as there are granite blocks of foundation in the back yard from a former barn that fell to ruin) that the prior owners did some interesting renovations to, and it never fails to do things that I've never seen at other places I've lived.

This morning is a good example of this oddness.

A couple of years ago, before Hurricane Irene came through my section of Maine, my husband was spending most of his winter climbing up onto the roof to shovel off the snow in order to prevent the roof collapsing under the weight.  The wear and tear on the shingles made them susceptible when we got the glancing blow from Irene, which ended up being just a lot of wind and rain, so there was a spot where the shingles failed, causing a leak.

Having been researching what to do with the roof to prevent himself from having to keep climbing up there until we retired, my husband spent several months pulling off the old shingles and replacing them with metal.  The only problem with this concept is that we ran out of money for the metal before we ran out of roof, so there's still a small part of the house (with a flatter roof) that hasn't been covered in metal, and when we have storms like this year, he doesn't always manage to get up onto that flatter portion between storms to get the shoveling done.

So, as of yesterday's storm, we had a small snow bank outside the windows upstairs, where the metal roof above our bedroom had dumped the snow from the last two storms from this week.  Last night's storm came after a bit of freezing rain, so what was on the metal was ice that was sticking to the metal that then was topped with a layer of snow.  It was starting to slowly work it's way down, but the ice makes this a fairly solid sheet - kind of like our own little Maine ice age happening on the roof(s).

This morning, I got up and went to look outside to see how much snow we got last night, and the photo shows what happens when a solid mass from above meets a snow bank from below and the above mass isn't ready to break and finish it's slide.  (This was just after sun up, and it's an even more interesting view as the sun starts around the building, it's rays slipping under the upper mass and making the whole thing look like we're living inside an ocean wave.......)

Thank you for sharing in the insanity of living in The House That Jack Built....