Usually the first snow of winter is a light dusting, amounting to an announcement. “It’s really winter now, little humans. Time to dig out the snow-boots and your warmest coats and gloves.” It melts off by mid-morning, and then you have a couple of weeks to a month before you have to worry about any serious accumulation.
Not this year. I’d heard there was snow in the forecast, but not how much, so I was expecting the usual half-inch or so. Imagine my reaction, then, when I got up to answer nature’s call at 3:30 this morning, glanced out the window, and saw that the ground had gone from crispy brown (the leaves I haven’t yet mulched) to solid white. There was no wind, so no drifts, but more white stuff was falling at quite an impressive rate. I looked at the roof of my car and realized we already had at least 6 inches, with more piling up merrily as I watched.
The phone rang at 5:30, announcing a 2-hour school delay. And about 8:00, when my son the budding meteorologist went out with my metal yard/meter stick to measure, it was a bit over 9 inches.
It’s pretty much limited to this county and the one to the east of us; lake effect snow (in our case Lake Michigan) is like that. But the weather service is predicting that this will be a particularly snowy winter overall. If the start is any indication, that may be an understatement.
Trival fact – In WWII many defense plants (especially munition plants) were built in that area of the USA becuase it has the highest numbers of days with cloud cover of anywhere in the lower 49
More even that Puget Sound? That surprises me.