Freedom — February 15, 2007 — The fun part of the real winter arrived on Valentine’s Day.

The snow began to fall after Midnight on Tuesday and continued all day Wednesday. Some snow early Thursday morning as I went out to the newspaper delivery box. We now receive the Conway Sun along with the Manchester paper. We throw the Manchester paper away and read the Sun.

The town plow has the road surface down to gravel and our driveway was plowed about 11 pm Wednesday night so I do not have a good place to measure depth but I expect the TV station report of 16″ is accurate.

The snow was dry and light. It slid off our metal roof several times during the day and evening. Sounds like a freight train traveling down the lake. No loss of electric power, telephone or TV. The Manchester area had some electric problems caused by vehicles taking down power poles but all is up and running now.

Up until the snow on Wednesday there was only a thin cover in the woods. Roads and parking lots were clear and dry – not even a row of plow-dumped snow around ;parked shopping carts or obstacles.

As for cold, not much of that either until two weeks ago when the church ran out of heating oil early Sunday morning (supplier having problems with reports from their “new and improved” tracking system).

For the last two weeks we have been down to near zero every night and only up to the mid 20s for a couple of hours during the day. Today we have strong wind out of the west that will keep me inside and most skiers off the slopes. Saturday and Sunday (President’s weekend) are predicted to be some of the 10 best days of the winter with temperatures approaching near 30 during the day.

There continues to be open water on Broad Bay from the marina south for several hundred feet. Must be caused by water flow from the Danforths.

We should now have enough snow in the area to fill the lake back up in time for summer fun on and in the water.