Of Fireplaces, Snowfalls, and Shovels
When it comes to snow, watching it fall is the best part. Remember that Friday night ... and Saturday morning if, indeed, more snow falls.
By Donnie Johnston
COMMENTATOR
Well, we got our snow, some more than others.
I measured 7.5 inches in my back yard. Some reported as much as eight or nine inches.
The first real snowstorm in three years. We snow lovers were beginning to think that winter had forsaken us.
And it came on the anniversary of the Blizzard of 1996, which produced 30-plus inches in many localities and 47 inches at Big Meadows on the Skyline Drive.
Even I didn’t want a repeat of that. Seven inches is plenty to shovel.
The bad part about Sunday night’s snow was that it came at night. I know, we all want to live in Camelot where it rains only at night and the sun shines every day.
Not so with snow. We like to see it come down and when it starts falling heavily at midnight, as it did Sunday, few of us are willing to sit up all night to see it come down. I made it until about 1 a.m. but then hit the hay.
But I enjoyed watching the snow fall until I did go to bed. When I built my house, I had a double outside light installed on the second floor for the sole purpose of watching it snow, which is somewhat mesmerizing against the darkness of the night.
Another bad thing about a nighttime snowfall is that you can’t keep up with the removal job. During the day I like to go out at hourly intervals and sweep/shovel the walks before the snow gets too deep. Shoveling two inches of snow isn’t nearly as strenuous as pushing seven or eight inches.
But that’s what I and most others had to do Monday. As I said, I gave up the ghost an hour after midnight and snuggled under the covers.
Of course, there is an advantage to not shoveling every hour because if it snows all night you wake up to a snowy wonderland void of footprints or other flaws.
As I said, even the snow haters among us love to watch the flakes fall. There’s something special about snow. It falls softly and quietly and doesn’t have the menacing quality of a hard rain. It’s just soft fluff floating down from a smooth, gray sky.
We want it to keep falling, never to stop. It is just so peaceful and begs of solitude. If you have a nice fire in the fireplace, as I did, a snowstorm is even more relaxing.
But it does eventually stop. And once you take an hour or so to soak in the beauty of a snowy landscape, reality sets in and you wonder how you are going to get rid of it.
Even if you have nowhere to go, you start to worry about getting out. Even if you have all the milk, bread and toilet paper in five counties stored in your basement, you get concerned about getting to the store.
In other words, you can’t wait for it to snow, and then you can’t wait for it to go away. And then when it goes away you want it to snow again so you can watch it fall. Oh, some of us like to play in it, but for the most part we just like to see it come down. I know. Kinda crazy, but that’s human nature. Brings out the child in all of us.
Then, after about three days it starts to get dirty and muddy and begins melting. Then it turns into ice and causes every event you have planned to be postponed until April. At that point you really want that snow to go away. But as soon as it does, we want more.
We had some drifting after this storm. It was a dry, powdery snow (temperatures in the 20s) and a cold front came in on its heels with plenty of wind.
Some will remember the days when VDOT (it was just the highway department back then) put snow fences in farmers’ fields in early November to keep the snow from drifting over country roads. Now that the state has heavy snow removal equipment, they don’t do that anymore. Then again, it doesn’t seem to snow as much as it once did.
Local baseball teams would buy VDOT’s old picket fences and place them around the outfield. But that’s a column for another day.
Anyhow, we got our snowstorm and with the cold weather the white stuff is likely to hang around a while. Besides, there may be another storm brewing for the weekend.
Friday night we may be able to once again relax and watch the snow come down, then worry about how we’re going to get rid of it.
By the way, the weather forecasters hit this one on the nose, even down to the trailing upper-level low that brought us that second round of snow.
Will wonders never cease!
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