Sunday (Before the blizzard) and Monday (During)

The top picture is 'our' red-tailed hawk in the tree really close to the house Sunday afternoon. It was still bright and sunny in the morning (a nice change from the last week!), but got dreary fairly early in the afternoon.

The hawk is in the upper right-hand corner of this picture in the tree.


The picture below is from Monday morning, when we were only supposed to get a 'dusting' to start with, then the estimate was for about 2 inches of snow--then 2 to 4 inches of snow--and we have at least 4 inches of new snow on the ground, and the wind has gusted past 40 mph today (and is still gusting this evening).

This weather shut down traffic on Interstate 35 today, which is the main north-south freeway from Minneapolis to Kansas City. There was a 30-40 car pile-up on two different highways this afternoon in Iowa, and visibility was down to zero! There are a couple of good videos on the Des Moines television station, kcci. Click here to go to their website.