Snow

Yesterday afternoon, I went out with a couple of friends. I paid close attention to the weather reports and planned on getting home before the storm rolled in. I ended up timing it pretty well, actually. When I headed home, it was raining and the streets were just wet. No problem. About halfway home, ice pellets outnumbered raindrops, but the streets were still fine. About three-quarters of the way home, the streets had grown crunchy with ice, and a translucent white crust covered the grass. By the time I pulled into my parking space, the roads were definitely slick, and I had a treacherous walk up the hill to my apartment complex. I’m certainly glad I wasn’t out any later, but it was fascinating to observe how very quickly this transformation took place.

After getting that initial layer of ice over everything, the weather turned to actual snow. For a while, it was the sticky kind, which makes such a splendid coating on trees and things. I wish I had followed my impulse to go out and take pictures around midnight, because that is when the trees were at their most beautiful, with thick white sheathes on every branch, ghostly in the glow of the streetlight and the haze of the blizzard.

But no, I figured the trees would still be pretty in the morning. And they are still quite lovely, but the high winds that tore through the dark hours knocked off a good deal of the thickness. Here is a shot from this morning, shortly after 7:00 am.


It’s a good day to hole up at home with a steamy cup of cocoa.