Sunday, February 20, 2011

When Good Snows Go Bad

It was such a nice week of melting. We were really starting to feel like spring might not wait until May to arrive. And then... well... the weather forecasters were actually dead-on right for once.

You see, early in the week they started predicting 8 to 14 inches of snow for us between today and tomorrow. Then, yesterday, they started to narrow down that window, saying that it would start this morning, peak in the mid-afternoon, and carry over into tomorrow.

When Christopher got up to let the dog out at about 6 this morning, there was no snow falling. What snow we had on the ground was nicely shrunken after the past week and life was fine. I thought, maybe, the forecast was wrong.

When I got up a little after nine and took the dog for her walk, the weather was breezy, but not bad. As I walked her, I was starting to think about gardening and hoping that things might actually start turning green, soon. All I saw was two snowflakes on my way back into the house.

By 11:30, we probably had a couple of inches of snow on the ground.

Our evening plans got cancelled - not for fear of snow or driving, but for fear of being unable to find parking. Our cooking class plans (for the class we bought Christopher for his birthday) got cancelled.

We had errands to run, though, so we went out around noon-thirty -- when the snow was about 3 inches deep. The roads were messy, but not awful. But whenever we parked for any length of time the car would get covered in snow, much of which was melting and freezing on the slightly-warmer car.

By the time we got home from our errands (which, honestly, were a breeze because no one was out shopping -- even Target was almost empty, which is unheard of on a Sunday afternoon), the snow was probably about 6 or 8 inches deep on the sidewalks and driveway -- which had been perfectly clear at 9 a.m. (Yes, I know that clearing the walks mid-storm is silly, but our snowblower can only handle about 7 inches of snow, so if we don't clear mid-storm we're kind of stuck. Literally.)

So now all of our nicely-melting snow is covered in another near-foot of snow. And the temps are dropping again, so we're pretty much assured that it's not going anywhere for a while.

Good thing I bought some fresh-cut tulips last week.

No comments: