I've been taunted by ice dams for a while now. I know, we all have, but these were bad and while I struggled to figure out just what to do about them, a roofer stopped at the neighbor's to look into a leak.

I invited him to pop over and see the dams and to tell me what it would cost to remove them. He barely finished saying, "$20," and I had my wallet out. He and another guy got up there and got rid of them as new snow fell.

Sadly, I wasn't around the remainder of that day and so, guess what, the new snow brought with it new ice dams, although certainly not as bad as the previous ones. And because there was a lot of ice up there, I suspect it's good to get back to zero even if just for a day or two, to get that weight off the roof and the gutters.

I can see this is going to be a very, very long winter ... once winter officially starts.