Snow Fell on Alabama

There's a rare mingling of sensations with a new-fallen snow.  Fresh yet familiar.  Excitement mixed with a remarkable quiet.

And every time feels like the first time.

Only a few things in life are like that, I think.  Christmas is like that.  The day you feel the first hint of fall in the air.  Sunsets are a bit like that. The beginning of college football each year is like that for me.

And here in the South, snow is like that.

After many letdowns and missed predictions the past two weeks, we finally got a beautiful, snowman-able snow on Wednesday.  And it was even more than they had predicted.  (I like to think of our local weather forecasters in terms of a Dos Equis commercial: "We don't always correctly predict when it's going to snow, but when we do, we severely underestimate the amount.")

It began around 2 o'clock in the afternoon and by sunset (when I went out to measure) we had nearly seven inches.  It continued to snow, though a bit lighter, until I went to bed.  My guesstimate would be we got around 9 inches.

So deep it was that I didn't go into work Thursday morning.  Anyone who knows me knows it takes an act of Congress for me to miss work.  (OK, so I actually did go in for about two hours around lunch.  Apparently there was a filibuster.)

Here are a few pics from our veritable winter wonderland...

"In the lane, snow is glistenin'..."

Where there's snow, there must be snow creme.

This looked like a postcard, except with poorer resolution.  Much, much poorer.

Hard to believe in a month, this yard will be covered with grass. And mosquitoes.

With apologies to Arthur Miller, I call this one "Death of a Snowman." (Biff Snowman?)

I'm sure it's comical for those in northern climes to see how we in the South react to snow.  Schools close.  Roads close.  (All roads were deemed impassable sometime Wednesday evening.)  Heck, even the Walmart closed this time.

People scurry to the store to stock up on milk, bread, and eggs like it's 1848 and they're at Independence, Missouri, stocking up the wagon for the arduous, months-long trip to the Willamette Valley.

And then there's the driving.

One guy had gotten stuck attempting to back out of his driveway.  This idiot had foregone shoveling any snow and somehow maneuvered his car to where it was now nearly perpendicular to the driveway.  So he was out there shoveling (It was more of a spade, really.  I mean, let's call a spade a spade, eh?) and had some poor woman out there attempting to help him, except she was using a garden hoe.  I can only assume she felt sorry for the hopeless sap.

It's not difficult to imagine every single person that passed during that twenty-minute ordeal were laughing heartily.

As for me, I didn't laugh.  But I was pret-ty sore the next day from all the shoveling.

"Forty-six, anechoic / Forty-seven, blown from polar fur / Forty-eight, vanishing world / Forty-nine, mistral despair..."