Last Wednesday: A foot and a half of snow.

This Tuesday: about six inches of wet snow, followed by freezing rain that put a layer of ice over everything.

Last night and today - six or seven inches of snow

Later this weekend - temperatures predicted to drop to five or ten degrees below zero Fahrenheit (-10 to -23 Celsius), not counting windchill

Conclusion - Not a good time to become a new homeowner and not have a snowblower.

Drifting snow and a sunset

The snowstorm didn't dump as much on us as predicted, but it was still a lot of snow and wind.  It stopped snowing this afternoon, but the wind was strong, with gusts up to 40 miles per hour (65 kilometers per hour).  The sun peaked through the clouds, revealing the blowing snow:

Later, as the sun was about to set it shone over the drifting snow in the field behind the house:

Then the sun approached and dropped below the horizon, illuminating the clouds in various shades of yellow, orange, red, and purple as the light got fainter:

Heavy snow coming

So far, it has been a very low-snow season.  While other parts of the USA and Europe have been getting hit hard with lots of snow, we've gotten a total of maybe 2 inches, most of it a few days ago.  Today and tomorrow, though, we are going to get pounded by a storm that is supposed to bring at least a foot and a half of snow (about .5 meters for you metric folk in the rest of the world).  Hopefully we don't lose power - that's the only thing I worry about.  It's supposed to be windy, too, so it will be a true blizzard.

Snow - beautiful to look at, a pain in the posterior if you have to do anything outside.

Only tolerates narrow temperature range

I've hated hot weather since I was a kid, but until I was 30 or so cold weather didn't bother me much unless it was really cold, like under 10 degrees Fahrenheit (under -12 Celsius). Over the last few years, though, I've noticed that I dislike the cold more and more as well.

Extrapolating from current trends, I predict that by the time I am 50 I will be extremely uncomfortable, and possibly even dead, anywhere outside the temperature range of 65 - 72 degrees Fahrenheit (18.3 - 22.2 degrees Celsius).

In terms of climate tolerance, I will have become like one of those rare and delicate plants that can only survive under an incredibly narrow range of conditions and quickly wilt and die if anything changes too much. The main difference is that the plants are probably a lot prettier than I am.

Let it snow

View out my bedroom window this morning

Since the start of work was delayed until after noon today due to snow, I just wrote about 6 paragraphs about how I grew up loving snow, but later came to think of it as a pain in the butt, but still appreciate how beautiful it can be. Then, when I was attempting to move the location of the picture, I somehow accidentally deleted everything that I had written - why doesn't blogger have a simple "Undo" icon?! I am not going to write all of it again, so I will sum up briefly -

- I loved snow as a child and missed it during a period where I lived in Louisiana.

- As I got older, snow became more of a burden and a lot less fun

- Unfortunately, it's not socially acceptable for a 34-year old man without kids to build snowforts or snowmen or throw snowballs around, so the stuff that I most enjoyed with snow as a kid is ruled out.

- Here in Massachusetts, snow often comes along with its siblings, sleet and freezing rain, which make life even more difficult than snow but with none of the side benefits.

- If only there were a way to keep the beauty of snow without all of the inconvenient part.

- Snow can be beautiful, but for my money it's not as beautiful as a good spring day.

A good spring day, by my reckoning