Talk about the Weather

What do you talk about when you have nothing to say? Some people just stay silent (bless their hearts). Many others rely on the weather as a ready topic. Unless I’m running on way too little sleep, I tend to be one of the former.

Having said that, let me tell you about today’s weather. We are having a snowstorm. A fairly big one (unless you live in a ski area, in which case, feel free to yawn). According to the National Weather Service, the snow would have started last night and continued until sometime well into today with a total accumulation of eight to twelve inches. Fortunately for all the morning commuters, the big snow did not materialize overnight; unfortunately, it promises to make coming home this evening fairly nasty.

A few minutes ago, the snow outside my window wasn’t so much falling as it was writhing in a winter dance of directional indecision. “Look at that! It’s coming from the west…no, the east…no, northeast…and there’s a swirl mixing with a blast coming horizontally out of the south…and, oh, the old one-two punch out of the west again…” A regular snowbrawl.

It’s not unusual for this part of the country to have a few big snowfalls in a single season, but it seems that we’ve already had more snow this winter than in any of the past eight or so. I’m not complaining. When it snows, I like to see a winter wonderland, and in recent winters, snow accumulations seem to have fallen short of those that I remember from my childhood. Of course, I was much shorter then, so it didn't take a lot of snow to be knee deep.