when the house is shaking and the windowpanes rattle.  On the plus side…after a distracted morning wondering where the drip is in the library, never a sound one wants to be hearing, I have finally discovered that it is not a drip at all.  The big plexiglass panel over the diamond pane windows has developed a tendency to go ‘pop’ at the bottom corner when the winds sets it vibrating just right.

The wind is making nice big drifts out of the snow though.  Whirling dervishes of ice rise up out of the meadow and come racing east, the drive that was plowed just a few hours ago is already rapidly closing, while the north lawn has been transformed from a flat plain into a landscape of drifts and eddies around the trees.  As the wind hits the west face of the house, it rises and drops the snow; eventually the west lawn will have a great drift that can easily be twenty feet long, for most of its length it will be only a foot or two, but as it drops over the story high bank it will fill the space, eight feet deep.  Blocked by the house, the east lawn will have no drifts at all.