One minute I'm warm and happy watching Happy Gilmore for the umpteenth time and the next I'm sitting behind this minivan that my kids augered into a snowdrift.  Notice the temperature in the upper right-hand corner of the image.  Three below zero.  That temp is no big deal, but when mixed with the winds that were howling around 40 mph, it was a tad chilly.  To give you an idea of how hard the wind was blowing, this van had only been stuck for about 10 minutes but its tracks had already drifted over.      

My kids grew up around four-wheel-drive vehicles so they're accustomed to traveling no matter what the weather.  Hence, when they're yanked from a 4x4 and put in a 2WD minivan interesting things happen. 

It was so brutally cold we left the little van where it was for the night.  It was a balmy -8 below zero F. this morning when we went out with project Trailhugger to retrieve the van.  At least the wind had died down.  

BTW: Towing with a 4:1 T-case, like the one we have in our H3 Alpha, totally rocks.  It feels like you could tow a train.

We've been getting hammered here in the Midwest.  Last Friday we got hit with 10 inches of snow.  This is no big deal.  It got interesting on Saturday night though, when temperatures did a spectacular nose-dive from the mid-20's to well below zero.  Still no big deal.  But then it got to be a pain on Sunday when brutal winds kicked up to about 40 mph with a high temperature of around 4 degrees F.  This caused major drifting of north/south roads.  We were on our way to town, bashing through grille-deep drifts with our H3 Alpha, when came across a guy who had stuck his S-10 Blazer in the snow.  His cell phone was dead and he had been with his truck for about 30 minutes.  

We did get a brief respite in the weather about a week ago and this gave us time to go cut down our Christmas tree at a tree farm in Avon, Wisconsin.

Our boys cut it down and I hoisted it up to the Gobi Stealth roof rack.

We're under yet another Winter Storm Watch, but the upside to that is we're going to rally from a high today of 4 degrees to almost 30 tomorrow.  Time to get out the shorts.