Tumbleweed Connection: And Easterners Thought The Snow Accumulation Was Bad

Yes, I know, you winter weary achy backed snow shovelers in the Midwest and Northeast. You can't bear to clear one more flake of snow after shoveling your driveway day after day, week after week for months.  

A Colorado neighborhood buried in tumbleweeds
earlier this week. 

But it could be worse! Yes, it could!  You could live in the community of Fountain, near Colorado Springs.

Residents there returned home from work one day last week to find tumbleweeds piled up to 10 feet high against their houses. 

They couldn't get in or out.

These tumbleweeds have been a particularly terrible problem in windblown, drought stricken areas of the western United States this winter.

And what do you do with the mess? It's not like the tumbleweeds are going to melt eventually. Plus, they could catch fire and cause a nasty wildfire. The snow in your driveway is not going to cause a fire, trust me.

For now, the residents have piled the the tumbleweeds in a common area, but if the wind blows in the wrong direction, it could pile them against the houses again.

Tumbleweeds have become a real problem in the western United States this winter. They grew like crazy, especially in areas that got a lot of rain last summer. Then it got dry, and they're blowing around and piling up and getting to be a nasty headache.

You could burn them, but only if it's not dry or windy out.  The city of Kennewick, in eastern Washington suggests stomping them or using  heavy duty string trimmer to break them into bits so you can somewhat more easily dispose of them in the trash.

Some cities are spending weeks and many thousands of dollars with heavy equipment trying to get rid of the tumbleweed invasion, which is the worst in memory for a lot of Western towns.

It was as bad as it gets recently in Clovis, New Mexico, as you can see from this incredible local news vieo out of New Mexico:



Here's the local news clip from Colorado: