Snow day
It’s snowing softly and gently. Because there’s not a ton of wind, I doubt I’ll lose power (knock wood because it’s always possible). But right now it’s one of those rather pleasant snows that merely serve to remind you that it’s winter in New England.
Of course, it’s different if you’re out driving in it. Fortunately, I canceled my tooth cleaning appointment – not one of my favorite activities anyway – and the only thing I plan to go outside for is maybe, just maybe, to stand there, shuffle around, and watch the snow coming down up close and personal instead of through the window.
Based on your imagery it sounds like the scene this song paints for me: https://youtu.be/iTOLwVB8d6U
“Snowfall” – Claude Thornhill & His Orchestra
It may be “rather pleasant snow” where you are, but here in coastal CT it’s the obnoxious mixture of snow, sleet, and freezing rain that the weather people call “wintry mix.” I have no intention of going out in it on foot, let alone driving in it, as the slush mixes with oil on the road surface to form a slippery goo.
Meanwhile, the roar of the snowblower is heard in the land . . . . even though New Haven got only 4.5″ so far, 2.5″ in North Haven. WFSB Connecticut News named the storm Winter Storm Anthony, but didn’t say whether it was named after Blinken or Fauci.
Two winter songs. Joni mitchel River ….Gordon Lightfoot. Song for a winter night I am sure there are many others but these are often overlooked
As a former CT resident with friends and family still there, I keep an eye on the weather for New England. PA+Cat can confirm, but this winter has been a non-event as far as I can tell for CT. Temps averaging 10-15 above normal. And I was a bit shocked to read just a few weeks ago that Hartford had had a total of 8″ of snow, when the average for that time is around 35″. Meanwhile, my other family in Denver are complaining as they are having a New England type winter.
85 here in Jax today.
physicsguy– NYC set a record on January 31 “for the longest stretch without measurable snow during the winter season in 50 years. CBS News reported that the city officially reached 327 days without measurable winter snowfall Monday, passing a record set in 1973. While temperatures have plunged to below freezing and some flakes have fallen, it hasn’t been enough to measure.”
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/3836857-nyc-sets-record-for-longest-winter-stretch-without-snow/
I assume the addition of the first 26 days of February makes this year’s record nearly unbeatable.
From the ye-ye front, here’s France Gall. When the French lyrics washed over me without understanding, I thought the singer was musing on the beauty of a snowfall to a pretty child’s musicbox tune.
Instead it’s this quiet tear-your-heart-out story of how the snow has covered her lover’s footprints, now she can’t find him, though she’s looking everywhere.
Then she finds two sets of footprints leading away from her.
The French!
–France Gall, “Il Neige — It’s Snowing” (w/ English/.French lyrics) (1967)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7Q-JIRB3rA
I assume the addition of the first 26 days of February makes this year’s record nearly unbeatable.
They officially recorded 0.4″ of snow on or around 1/31, though I sure didn’t see it. Then last night there was some snow that didn’t really stick (except to cars and maybe grass in the parks), but seems to be officially around 2″. I believe the record low total for a winter is 2.8″, so we might not break that.
Today’s snow day, likely the same one, since we live in a distant suburb from Boston, came at a good time. I normally work-out two days in a row, then take a day off. Today was a day off, so shoveling the driveway didn’t interfere with any other lunchtime plans. Since it’s still snowing, it could be a problem for tomorrow’s work-out.
What I miss the most about those kinds of days, was the quality of absolute quiet that would descend with a steady snowfall. All of the sounds of humanity become muffled by the snowy blanket, passing cars hardly make any noise at all, and one gets the sense that the stillness is really always there – you just don’t get to hear it revealed unless it’s snowing like that; that it’s a real thing, not just an absence of sound.
Aggie–
Do you know Elinor Wylie’s poem, “Velvet Shoes”? It’s about what you call “the quality of absolute quiet that would descend with a steady snowfall”:
Let us walk in the white snow
In a soundless space;
With footsteps quiet and slow,
At a tranquil pace,
Under veils of white lace.
I shall go shod in silk,
And you in wool,
White as white cow’s milk,
More beautiful
Than the breast of a gull.
[We shall walk through the still town
In a windless peace;
We shall step upon white down,
Upon silver fleece,
Upon softer than these.]
We shall walk in velvet shoes:
Wherever we go
Silence will fall like dews
On white silence below.
We shall walk in the snow.
Here is a musical setting of Wylie’s poem– the stanza in brackets was omitted from the choral version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0k-4dRP-kQ&ab_channel=KarenBock
I hope you enjoy it.
A gentle snow, and the quiet it brings, are soul-repairing for me.
Aggie,
I really like that change in sound you described. It too is one of my favorite things about stepping outside after an appreciable snowfall. The song I posted @ 2:47 somehow captures that, musically.
The conclusion of James Joyce’s short story The Dead, often called the finest in the English language. (Micheal Furey refers to a long-dead teenage lover the observer’s wife has never forgotten.)
It rewards being read aloud.
________
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
@ physicsguy > “And I was a bit shocked to read just a few weeks ago that Hartford had had a total of 8? of snow, when the average for that time is around 35?.”
I think Los Angeles got all of Hartford’s missing flakes.
Meanwhile, Denver is expecting more snow Wednesday night, to last through until Friday.
“85 here in Jax today.”
Don’t rub it in!
We are a few days from the 30th anniversary of the Blizzard of 93. In my neighborhood in Knoxville we got 15″ in 24 hours with 40 mph winds. Some places nearby got 5 feet, I was in Italy. My wife didn’t leave the house for ten days. Snow was piled so high in parking lots that it didn’t melt for weeks (May). And they had to use Army helicopters to airdrop supplies to stranded people and rural areas.
“In terms of human impact, the Superstorm of 1993 was more significant than most landfalling hurricanes or tornado outbreaks and ranks among the deadliest and most costly weather events of the 20th century,” — National Weather Service.
stan- you must be citing a weather event that proved climate change existed 30 years ago (NOT!).