Ruby of The Thundering Herd Annex (the Hu-Grandparents)
Woo – What a small world. There was a mudslide in our little town and apparently it made the national newswire. We received a number of emails during the course of the day asking if we were ok. The answer – Yes. Same true for Tartok and Ruby over at The Thundering Herd Annex.
What happened? About a mile away from us, a wall of mud began sliding down a mountain side. That wall was tall – 30 feet (9 meters) high. That wall was wide – 175 feet (53 meters). And it slid a very long ways down the mountain – 3000 feet (900 meters). The good thing? It was slow. It took 30 minutes to move that distance which allowed for evacuation and no serious injuries or deaths. Absolutely amazing.
Between of the amount of snow, ice and rain we have had in the last couple of weeks, the ground simply gave way.
Mud slides like this are very common. While the Maggie Valley slide made news, we also had major slides in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park (partially closing US 441 – for a second time), one in Weaverville, and another not far away in South Carolina – all this weekend. And all of this on top of the Interstate 40 rock slide that has had the interstate closed since October. Mother Nature simply likes to remind us that all of this rugged beauty is, well, rugged.
As always, a special thank you to the excellent emergency response crews in our area that worked around the clock to make sure everyone was safe (including digging out 4 canines from the mud – and all 4 are safe and sound). Those crews had to work in ATV’s like these to get around the mountainous terrain:
But we are safe and sound. We did do a survey of our area and, other than some downed trees from wind and ice, no problems around our house. More snowy scenes back tomorrow from our weekend adventures:
We seem to be having a lot of this in the past couple of weeks, but it was another slushy, icy, snowy, rainy day here. We had a couple of inches of snow, mixed with some ice and sleet, and finally about 2 inches of rain during the course of the day – with a high temp of 35 F (1 C).
We were curious what those 2 inches of rain would have meant if it had been just a little colder. A “rule of thumb” (now why isn’t that called a “rule of paw”?) is that an inch of rain equals 10 inches of snow. But the reality is that that depends on the density of the snow (are we getting scientific or what?). According to the National Weather Service, an inch of rain could equal as little as 3 inches of wet, heavy snow or as much as 100 inches of dry powder. We think we lost out on 15 feet of snow today. Ok, probably not, but we sure wish we had had more snow than this steady cold rain.
But you know The Herd. We never miss our walk. That is the deal with the humans. Walk us everyday and we will not destroy the house. Maybe The Herd is good at the extortion racket, what do you think? Anyway, hope you enjoy our soggy, cold walk.

Coming back down our drive at the end of the walk, Kodiak executes a perfect "Cheoah slide" to maximize snow coverage.
Today’s forecast is for a few inches of fluffy snow. Let’s hope.
UPDATE – 7:34 a.m. – We just read Max’s of South Africa update. We know most of you are already checking in, but please go there right now and wish Max and his family the best. They have just received the news that none of us ever want to hear.
It is the start to another great weekend and the weather is supposed to be perfect – if you are a Siberian Husky (cold, windy, snowy – awesome!). So we thought we would share a few scenes from around where we live to kick off our weekend.
Our pal Huffle will certainly agree with this post considering Huff’s post yesterday.
Queen Natasha the Evil is quite clear to the rest of The Herd that she is in charge. What she wants is hers and nobody had better question that. Have any doubt? Check out the picture below. Natasha is being clear to Kodiak and Kiska about whose sunbeam this is. And Kodiak’s body language is crystal clear that he is not about to argue.
With the ice mixed into the snow this weekend, we did not get out and do any trails – much too difficult to walk. We pretty much stuck to walking around where we live since the road had been plowed. Hope you enjoy our scenery.
Another one of those 24 hours periods where we have all types of weather – snow, rain, freezing rain, ice, sleet, and freezing fog. Makes for some very crunchy snow – not the fun powdery stuff. Oh well, it did look pretty first thing this morning:
After the snow plow got to our road, we went for a walk. The weather was still all the nasty stuff, so we were walking pretty fast. Well, the black and white team was. The red team was dawdling.