When I lived just outside Iowa City in the 70s and 80s, several times per winter we'd go from being able to freely travel into town or out to interstate 80 within 5-10 minutes, to being snowbound for 3-4 days. The lane to my farmhouse was about a block long, and I had a 4WD Subaru. Even if I could make it out to the asphalt road in front of the house, within another block or so there were deep roadcuts in both directions that would drift full of snow to 8-10 feet or more within a few hours. Neither the city nor Johnson county claimed us, and even when they got it worked out who would come out to snowplow, they had to wait for big snowblowers to come from some distance away that could blow the snow 60-70 feet up over the power lines to clean out the roadcuts. We always had to be ready for these impromptu confinements in the wintertime, and had a nice Lange airtight woodstove and plenty of oak treetops harvested by our own hands (and with a permit that cost $5 per year) from the big commercially logged timbers in nearby Amana. The lumber companies would take the big trunks and leave the treetops for locals to chainsaw up and haul away. Amazing firewood. Once dried, the hard oak logs would basically burn twice. Once with a flame, and then a second time as a big log-shaped red-hot glowing coal which would slowly crumble into fine white ash.