Snow

It's hard to explain how we feel about snow here in the south.  I grew up with snow in the Chicago area and remember the excitement of the first snow, the hope for snow on Christmas, walking in the amazing quiet of a blizzard, building snow forts and having snowball fights.  I also remember, as an older person, the longing for the snow to be gone and warmer temperatures to come back.  And the dread of driving the kids to school in two feet of new snow or 1/2 inch of new ice.

It's really totally different living here in this part of Texas.  We commonly go decades without snow or with only an occasional flurry.  I came across this quote on FaceBook this morning and it sums it up nicely.  This is from Thomas Wolfe: "Snow in the South is wonderful.  It has a kind of magic and mystery that it has nowhere else.  And the reason for this is that it comes to people of the South not as a grim, unyielding tenant of Winter's keep, but as a strange and wild visitor from the secret North."  Yes!  Nailed it.

We have had brisk winds from the north, overcast skies, temperatures in the 40's and rain for the last several days.  It's been totally yucky weather.  I've been feeding the llamas, alpaca and goats in the barn so they have a bit of time to dry off before I toss them back out into the weather.

But last night was a wonderland.  They predicted possible sleet mixed with the rain.  Our temperatures have been way too warm to have any of the frozen stuff stick on the roads, bridges or hard surfaces but possibly a dusting of snow/sleet might stay on the grass and trees long enough for us to see it.  No disrespect to the weather forecasters, but damn!  We had snow!

According to David Paul on channel 11 last night, forecasting snow in the southern parts of the country is amazingly difficult.  So many things have to be perfect for it to happen - the right humidity aloft, the right temperatures to freeze the rain on it's way down, the right ground level temps, etc.  So I guess we can just glory in the fact that it happened.  And I do.

I would guess we had between 1 and 1.5 inches.  Like they said, no snow on the road so no problems driving out to the feed store this morning, but our place looked like a fairyland.  As I write this, most all of the snow is gone.  The temperature which was down below freezing overnight has risen back into the 40's.  Yes, snow here is a very fleeting thing.

It makes me so happy!  I feel more enthusiastic about Christmas coming but also very pleased that the vast majority of my shopping is finished.  It's pretty much all on UPS and FedEx now.

I assumed the goats would all be hiding in their shelters when I came out to feed this morning.  Nope.  They were all up the pasture, happy that it wasn't raining.  I think the cold wet fluffy stuff on the ground was better than the almost just as cold liquid stuff falling from the sky.

And now the sun has come out and I can see blue sky.  We are supposed to be back in the 60's tomorrow afternoon and through the weekend.