Sunday, December 23, 2007, 18:40
Blizzard
Hmmm. . .imagine that. The weather forecast I heard before I wrote my last blog entry was wrong.
Instead of a little light rain followed by a brief period of light snow on Saturday as was predicted, we are now in a winter storm warning on Sunday. And it is cold outside. The wind is blowing out of the west/northwest at 20 to 40 mph. It is snowing too.
The snow started Saturday evening. The wind kicked up at the same time. When I went out to check the horses Saturday night before I went to bed, the wind was already cold and driving snow ahead of it.
The snow was still falling and the wind was still howling Sunday morning. Randy and I were getting ready for church when Randy's cell phone rang. The weather was bad enough that church was canceled. We only live a mile and a half from the church, but other people would have had to drive much farther.
The weather forecast says the snow and wind will continued for the rest of the day. At this point, it impossible to tell how much snow we have gotten. The wind is blowing it around all over the place.
At any rate, looks like I will have snow to snowshoe in after all! If I can find my snowshoe trails when the snow stops drifting. . .
LeAnn R. Ralph
Saturday, December 22, 2007, 18:12
Mush. . .
Well — it *was* looking a lot like Christmas here at Rural Route 2. Outside anyway. Not inside. I haven't done anything about decorating inside the house for Christmas. No time. Or not enough time. Because if I'm going to decorate, then I want to do a top to bottom cleaning first. And I haven't had time for that.
The reason it's not looking so much like Christmas outside anymore is that this past week it has been warm, in the 30s, and foggy and misty. Much of the lovely snow we had gotten earlier has melted.
That's right. Melted.
We went from having an average temperature of 6 degrees for the week to an average temperature right around the thawing point. And now the snow, what's left, is very watery and mushy.
I am terribly disappointed. I was just getting my snowshoe trails in order! And now it is far too wet to snowshoe. For one thing, it's hard to snowshoe in mushy, wet snow. And for another thing, it's hard on the snowshoe webbing. The webbing is rawhide sealed with varnish, and if it gets wet, the webbing turns soft and starts to stretch. Not good.
The weather forecast said it was supposed to snow this morning, but I've only seen a few wet flakes falling earlier. Nothing to speak of.
The weather forecast also says it is supposed to turn cold again after this. Of course, it turns quite cold, even though I won't be able to snowshoe on my trails (it would be like walking on the road or on a sidewalk with snowshoes), if it freezes hard enough, I may be able to just walk on the snowshoe trails without snowshoes.
So much for an old-fashioned winter.
As I was looking at the melting snow Friday evening when we went outside with Pixie, I said to Randy, "I want my snow back! This isn't fair. I want my snow! I was just getting the snowshoe trails in order!"
"It's going fast, too," Randy said.
"I want snow!" I said. "Of course, now that I've said that, I suppose I could be sorry. The next thing you know, we'll have six feet of snow."
I can only hope. A large amount of snow would be just what we need to recharge the groundwater in the spring and to get the wetlands filled again. We had snow on the ground before it had frozen too deep, so if the snow doesn't all melt now, we stand a reasonable chance of the water soaking in when it thaws in the spring instead of all running off.
It's early in the season, though, and there's really no telling how much snow we will end up with by the time April arrives.
Christmas cards
I did not send out any Christmas cards last year. With any luck at all, I may get some of them sent out today. As I told Randy, it's very likely people will get their cards between Christmas and New Year's. Which I guess isn't all that terrible.
LeAnn R. Ralph