An Early Snowfall

Or make that an early blizzard.  The National Weather Service warned of the storm early - Yay! - then continued to upgrade it right up through Friday.  It was official when the Winter Storm Warning was cancelled at 7:30 on Friday morning and replaced with the Blizzard Warning until midnight. 

This was our view by mid-morning on Friday.  Nothing much unusual for Wyoming except that it wsa so early.  The trees are still in full (mostly) green leaf. 

Those are were beautiful wave petunias.  Now they are soggy messes that need to be cleaned out of the beds....

The worst thing about this storm, though, was that it was preceeded by rain.  Lots of rain.  So the livestock - at least around here - were totally soaked to the skin before the temperature dropped and the snow and wind started.  And this time the winds were brutal.  Just brutal.

We moved as many of the crew as we could into run ins and stalls to protect them from the winds.  Some of the bigger cows had to tough it out in windbreaks.  We felt so sorry for them.  Rarely do we ever see our cows shivering, but the wet coats and high winds meant really chilly cows. 

The black cow in the photo above is Wrencesky.  She's due this week, so we brought her up with the show girls until things settled down a bit.  We joke that she's holding out on us now because she's dry, has a roof over her head and is eating the best of the hay.  Little Scarlet behind her thinks she makes a pretty warm windbreak!

Fortunately, we, like most other rural Wyoming folk, are most always prepared.  The interstates throughout our state were closed - I25, I80 and I90.  All the local county highways were closed... and finally most were opened last evening.  As our neighbor Jenny said on Facebook:  "Very pretty if you don't own livestock and have no where to go!"  And that pretty well sums it up.

We're looking forward to a new calf and warmer days.