After getting my chores done yesterday afternoon, I was sat in the front yard in a t-shirt, enjoying the sunny 70 degree weather with the dogs. Somewhere around 4:00, somebody flipped a switch and it got dark, windy, rainy, and increasingly cold. It got cold enough to snow a bit overnight but everything was too warm for more than a sloppy white coating that didn’t even cover the grass all the way (though if I’d cut the grass one last time, it might have). Now, though….

First real snow of the season.

Well, it’s starting to sitck but there’s not a whole lot of accumulation just yet. The heavy stuff is supposed to kick in overnight and (most inconveniently) for the morning commute. This is one of those “triple threat” storms we get around here that really depends on which way the wind blows. First, there’s snow the cold front that’s been moving across the country. Then winds from the north west pick up moisture from Lake Ontario and dump lake effect snow on us. Once that passes, the counterclockwise winds that surround the low pressure system swirl back across the lake and give us another round of lake effect.

They say we’ll get about a foot of snow by 8 AM tomorrow, so that’ll be nice for the ride in. Not a blizzard or anything, but enough to be annoying. There’s always the possibility the wind’ll blow a different way and we’ll be spared the worst of it. Or it could blow another way and be much worse than they predict. Hard to say. Either way, it’s seems safe to say I’ll be out on the tractor plowing bright and early (well, early, anyway – I’ll have to get out there well before sunrise), and I hope they manage to get the public parking lot down in the village cleared enough to park before I have to get on the bus (or at least stand at the corner waiting for it) at 7:07. As this is my first winter doing the whole public transportation thing, I don’t know what to expect. But at least I won’t have far to drive.

The wife, however, is a different story. Her commute is shorter than what I used to have, but it still involves a bunch of hills. And she hasn’t got her snow tires on yet so she’s a bit worried. I don’t actually have snow tires for my car – too cheap to get them the past two years, and since my commute is only two miles now, I’m not planning on getting them anytime soon.

I mean, much like the state of the nation since this past election, it’s all downhill from here anyway. About 1,000 feet downhill. Most of that in three-tenths of a mile or so. So all you have to do is hit the brakes at the top of the hill and hope you slow down enough to stop before you have to take a hard left and then get around the right-hand hairpin curve by the cemetery. If not, a tombstone is sure to stop you if a telephone poll doesn’t get you first.

Getting back up can be a bit of a challenge if it’s slippery, though. Unfortunately, there’s no way to get home without going up a hill. Plus, it’s not like we’re in the Rocky Mountains and have to get through the Eisenhower Tunnel or something.

On the bright side, it’s very pretty if you don’t have anywhere to go.