"Sometimes it Snows in April"

Proof:



We'll get a projected 3-4 inches in my neck of the woods; 6+ inches are expected where Joe's parents live.

I'm told this is unusual. I'm finding spring to be a strange beast of a season ...




Update: After the day of snowy-drizzle I realized this would probably be the last snow of the season. Then, tonight, I stood outside in an atmosphere just cold enough to snow, watching the wind guide the flakes north, south, east and west. It's truly incredible how the snow can amplify the wind, making it entirely noticeable.

It made me remember all of the snow I've seen the year –– the kind that falls, sparkling under yard lights when it's very cold, the little tubes of snow that amass when its in between warm and cold, the soft, big, clumpy flakes and the little tiny balls of snow that melt on contact with anything –– and how magical my experience of winter has been.

The experience also reminded me that, in a culture that values comfort and efficiency, one can easily forget how beautiful "inconvenient" things are. Minnesotans often see snow as a hassle, increasing the occurrence of car accidents, making travel slow, ice-scrappers necessary and big, unfashionable coats a mainstay.

But, if you take a moment to stand and watch the snow, letting it fall on your shoulders and face, you remember that your inconvenience is marginal to the world around you –– that your inconvenience means nothing to anyone but you.

For some reason, this is very empowering to me; it reminds me that my place in the world has more weight than any one of my accomplishments or failures, and makes me content in simply existing in the snow.

Snow, Snow, Snow, Snow

So, we got another storm at the end of this week. It hit, lovingly, on Wednesday night and grew to Blizzard-like conditions by 3:30 Thursday, as I headed home. The CR-V:



The roads:



Other than an on-ramp that I had to literally coast down because it was full of snow, I didn't have too much trouble on the way home. Though I had to drive slow, it didn't take as long as I feared it would.

After both storms, the snow outside our apartment has accumulated to this:





We're not blanketed like that everywhere, but there is a lot of snow.

...Sometimes Come Around

This is part two of a two part blog about the snow, which appears below. The Weather Service calculated the snow amount at about 10 inches. I'm not sure if that's what we accumulated, or what was the snowfall amount. Because of drifting, we had areas with under and inch of snow and some, as you will soon see, with feet of snow.

This is the same tree that appears in the before shot.




I like to call these Snowdunes:





Just to give you an idea of how deep that drift is:











But, trust me, I'm not complaining. We were pretty lucky. Many parts of Iowa and Southern Minnesota were blanketed with ice before the snow.

Snowy Days and Sundays

This is a two part post starting with what welcomed me into morning a few days ago:



And from the inside out:



This weekend brought the biggest storm I've witnessed yet. In anticipation, I took this shot before it began:



I'll post the after pictures tomorrow, but here's a sneak peak of the view from our window mid-storm: