With a positive attitude, this afternoon I drove the 10 miles to Billy’s field intent on getting him out and delivering him for his final warranty service tomorrow. A sinking feeling began to take hold as I approached, the bushes beside the roads appearing more snow-covered than chez nous. The fields looked decidedly white, too.
Not wishing yet to admit defeat, I unbolted the gate into the caravan storage field. At least the bolts weren’t actually frozen into their keeps this year. I drove into the snow-covered field. My positive attitude turned to foolish optimism as I released the tethering straps that secure our caravan’s cover. OK, so here’s the essential numbers of Billy’s dimensions (body, not including the draw bar):
- length = 5.5m
- height = 2.6m
- width = 2.18m
If that’s Billy’s size then that is also the size of his snug-fitting all over winter coat. Since Billy’s field was covered in about 3ins/75mm of that irritating white stuff, so was Billy even, I might add, about a metre of his slightly sloping front.
Foolishly, I began trying to raise the front of Billy’s cover, complete with ~2m2 of 0.075m deep snow – let’s call that 0.15m3 snow.
Even that much snow is heavy – it’s difficult to shift it and it’s quite impossible to raise it to a height of 2.6m using what amounts to a broom handle, the implement provided by the manufacturers of the caravan covers.
Foolishness gave way to blind stupidity; I brushed off the front snow and actually succeeded in raising the front panel of the cover up onto Billy’s roof. What on earth was I thinking I was going to do next? I might have brushed off the relatively modest amount of snow clinging to Billy’s nose but the roof was also covered side to side and front to back in 3in/75mm of the blasted stuff.
- area of roof = 5.5m * 2.18m = 12m2
- volume of wet snow = 12m2 * 0.075m = 0.9m3
I’ve no idea what nearly one cubic metre of wet snow weighs but I do know that even thinking that I could get the cover out from under it was dumb in the extreme.
I returned home, mentally calculating the above as I drove, suffering from a severe attack of reality.
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