The dawn was cloudy and gray this morning. After the first light the snow started to fall; small and delicate, the flakes floated slowly to the ground. There wasn’t much wind, so their gracefulness was beautiful. Within a few hours the snow stopped and the clouds cleared. This was a direct contrast to the snowfall we had earlier in the week. With winds up to 40 mph and snow falling at over an inch per hour, those blizzard conditions were anything but quiet and peaceful. That snowfall accumulated to 10 inches; today’s was a light dusting.
blizzard
Morning after the blizzard
This morning dawned bright and cold. The air temperature was hovering around zero, the wind was blowing sharply from the north, and the sun was crisp. Our surroundings in the Twin Cities had changed over the previous 24-hours as we had added 17 inches of snow to the five inches that remained from our last snowfall. With the forecast on Friday of heavy snow by Saturday, people were busy preparing for the worst. At 9:00pm Friday night the grocery store parking lot was packed, and all the checkout lines inside were 10 to 12 people deep. Saturday saw very few people on the roads as the snow fell all day long, with the wind blowing it into drifts that were beautifully artistic, not to mention deep. I’ve learned that in a snow of this type, you do NOT wait until the snow stops to shovel. Those people who didn’t begin to shovel until today were faced with snow up to their knees, and that was once they had cleared a way to get out the door. For all the gray and snowy skies of yesterday, the bright sunshine today was welcome, even if the temperatures stayed only in the single digits. It is a beautiful white landscape here, and I’m sure it will be a white Christmas in the Twin Cities this year.
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