Winter Hath Come Again

This has been an odd winter, one that cannot decide if wants to go down as a bitterly cold year, or an abnormally warm one. The snow came early, and Thanksgiving was memorable for near-record cold, and for surprisingly heavy snow fall. This sort of weather continued on and off through the first week or so of January, when there was a sudden, furious shifting of weather patterns, leading to weeks and weeks of too warm, spring-like conditions. Most people rather enjoyed it, but I am a winter-lover myself, and found myself going rather stir-crazy for want of some proper weather. I had just about despaired of it, when conditions shifted furiously back again. For the last couple weeks, we've had a return of the cold, and a series of big storms, each dropping a foot or two of light, powdery, beautiful snow on us, then clearing for a day or two so that we are able to get ourselves properly dug out before the next one came. I have been enjoying the wild weather tremendously. Here I am, on my way to work:

First Snow

We had our first proper snow of the season last night - a very heavy, wet snow that did not so much fall as plummet. My family and I went to Mass in Carson City, and ended up driving back up the mountain in the storm, and a right challenge it was too, let me tell you. It was a very black night. The huge, feathery flakes, driving wildly into the windscreen, caught the light from the headlights, and scattered it into the storm. A flat, white wash of snow on the road obliterated the lanes. The concrete divide in the center of the highway, and the white line marking the shoulder of the road, disappeared into the into the vortex. It was as though the whole world had shrunk, and consisted of nothing more than my small car in all that fury of snow,. If anything were to materialise in that great nothingness, I would not have seen it until the last moment. Fortunately, I rather like driving in snow. I am good at it, and enjoy the occasional challenge. Still, I must admit that I should not like an experience like that too often.

It was a short-lived storm, for all its fury. We got a couple inches of snow out of it, enough to make the roads icy, and the world look like a half-finished sketch in watercolours, but it will no doubt be away before the day is out. I ran out first thing this morning to get a picture of snow on our birch tree, which is still dressed in all its golden splendor, while the aspens have been reduced to pale ghost-trees, all green-grey, their few remaining leaves the colour of winter sunshine. The picture does not do justice to the colours, of course - photographs almost never do - but it gives the idea.

Spring Snow

This is what I saw outside my window when I woke up this morning:

My neck of the woods is having a cool, wet spring. I think I am the only person left who is still delighted every time it snows, which it has been doing every few days for weeks now. You'd think I would be used to it, but I am not. I keep taking those warm days of false spring between cold fronts for the real thing, so each little snow storm takes me by surprise.