Yeah, it snowed yesterday

And, yeah, it's gone already. Only got about an inch, never got much below freezing and today the high was near 50, so the snow disappeared quickly. We've had about five or six snows this winter, none of them more than an inch or two. Some of them hung around for quite some time because we've had some prolonged cold weather several times this winter, but by and large this winter has been only slightly less disappointing, winter-weather-wise, than last winter, which basically was spring. Oh well. I can live without cold weather -- high school in Hawaii was great -- but if I live somewhere that is supposed to get cold, damn it I want it to snow. So far we've had some pretty good cold, but not snow. Not much luck the last couple years. The storms keep missing us by just a little bit.

Having said that, we'll probably get a blizzard in two weeks. Careful what you wish for.

Do they not make ski masks for beer drinkers?

As I mentioned previously (I'm not linking to it, damn it, go find the post on the blog "Readers do the nicest things") a reader sent me a ski mask after I mentioned that my face almost froze off on a recent walking of Jeb the Wonder Dog. Again, go read the blog and find the post. I'm under time constraints here. Anyway, I had not yet had to use the ski mask as a ski mask since I got it -- I had used it as a hat. Tonight, while walking Jeb the Wonder Dog, my face was, again, freezing off.  It is low 20s, maybe high teens tonight, but just enough breeze that my cheeks were starting to hurt, so I pulled the ski mask down.

You know what? It is hard as hell to drink a beer through a ski mask without soaking the damn mask and severely reducing its warmth-giving value. I had to keep pulling the bottom of the mask up so my mouth was free to slurp in the nectar of the gods. It was awkward. I certainly hope there is a beer-drinker's ski mask out there. I intend to look.

BTW, this is what I look like in a ski mask:

And no,  that was not me at your Mini-mart at about midnight.

But what does it mean?

Yes, it has been unbelievably cold lately. This raises questions. If my beer freezes while I am walking the Wonder Dog, does that mean it is too cold to walk the Wonder Dog, or that I am drinking too slowly? Inquiring minds want to know.

Gee, and I thought it was cold

Having just stumbled in the door from walking Jeb the Wonder Dog -- a separate event from walking Sadie the Auxiliary Back-up Dog and JTWD at the same time, which I did just before the Jeb walk -- I checked the temperature, since I was pretty sure my face had fallen off. As it turned out, it was only 6 degrees F, nowhere near as low as I thought. Of course, the wind chill took it to -11 F, so maybe it was cold. Doesn't matter. Jeb the Wonder Dog showed no signs that he thought this was anything other than a comfortable spring day. We went for 35 minutes, and he showed every sign that he could go as long as anyone wanted to walk him. Sometimes I hate that dog.

Well, that was an exciting drive

We're supposed to get up to 8 inches of snow tonight. Unfortunately, it started several hours before I left work, which meant about two inches had fallen by the time I got to my car at the Metro station -- just enough to make the roads a mess, but not enough to get the plows out yet. The 30 miles home -- the last 10 over some very hilly, twisty country roads -- was a joy. Obviously, I made it. Just 15 minutes after I got home, my car looked like this:

We were already better than 2 inches in by the time I walked Jeb the Wonder Dog, and the front yard looked like this:

Low teens, but no wind, so the walk wasn't as bad as the last couple of nights. But it was still stupid cold. Snow I can live with, but bitter cold is, like, totally not my thing. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

I think I just froze my face off

For what might be the first time in my life that did not involve an armed robbery, I wished tonight that I owned a ski mask. We got a little snow tonight -- about an inch, pretty much all at once, which made the drive home interesting, as the "all at once" coincided with when I was driving home -- but that isn't the real story. The low tonight is supposed to be about 7 degrees. Right now, it is about 13 degrees (we're talking Fahrenheit here, people), but the wind chill is down to -7, because it is really windy. And I just got back from walking a dog who apparently thought it was too cold to drop the deuce.

For 30 minutes, we walked the neighborhood. He finally did the deed when I was probably minutes away from going full Robert Scott and dying in a snow drift (look it up, people). The main problem was that, while I had a great hat on that kept my head warm, and a nice scarf that kept my neck warm, and a bazillion layers that kept my upper body warm, and I don't give a fuck about my legs because I once went through two of the worst winters in 100 years in Blacksburg, Va., wearing shorts and so I know they can take it (different story, people, focus, can we?) my face was exposed. This turned out to be a serious issue.

No lie, I thought I was going to get frostbite on my cheeks. Having once gotten frostbite on my feet while riding in the back of a pickup truck driving from Needles, Calif., to Kingman, Ariz., I knew that frostbite is one of the most painful things around. Imagine my pleasure when I got home, frost-bite free. My face was cold. It was not a happy time.

But I'm OK now. That doesn't mean I won't buy a ski mask tomorrow.

I'm detecting a pattern here

The pattern is, it seems to snow every damn week at least once. Maybe not a lot, at least not every time, but often. Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, it did it again. This time, it was just a dusting. At 5:30 Wednesday morning, I took Jeb the Wonder Dog out to pee and found that about 1/4 inch of snow had fallen sometime during the night.

Because the temperature hasn't been above freezing for about two weeks, still lots of snow from previous snowfalls still on the ground. Jeb the Wonder Dog, of course, doesn't mind snow as he has a nice fur coat:

I'll try to get a picture next time, but when I am working outside in the snow and Jeb is with me, he cheerfully lies down in the snow to wait as if he were indoors on a nice, warm sofa.

While we were out walking, Jeb the Wonder Dog and I saw deer tracks on the sidewalk. So good to be close to nature, especially when nature is civilized enough to use the sidewalk:

Granted, this was a trivial snowfall, but apparently it is snowing a lot this winter all over the country. A reader sent me this picture, and I wanted to give credit to the website that originally posted it. Unfortunately, a Google search (for images) will tell you that a whole bunch of churches have put up similar signs:

Doesn't make it any less hilarious.

For this I missed 12 hours of overtime?

That's how temps look at being forced to stay home by the weather, holidays or whatever. You don't work, you don't get paid. This was a holiday week already, since we were idled by MLK Day. Throw in a snow day, you turn a mediocre paycheck into a shit paycheck.

That doesn't mean we can't enjoy the snow, right? It started at about daybreak and by noonish looked like this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

Just from the front porch, four or five hours in. Of course, it snowed all day. At some point, Jeb the Wonder Dog is going to have to pee. So out we went. Jeb digs snow:

Likes to run around in it:

Here's the beanfield at about 4 pm (sometimes it's a cornfield, and last spring it was a wheat field -- it's flexible), one of Jeb's favorite romping grounds:

Now he just wonders what the hell is taking me so long to get him back inside for his hot chocolate (I kid -- I would never give Jeb dog-killing chocolate):

As darknes started to fall, the whole thing was getting a little tedious. It snowed a couple hours into the night, finally tailing off at about 7 pm, leaving us with about 10 inches. Lots of wind, so some areas were blown clear, and others got some deep drifts. Hope to capture a little of the wind-sculpted snow later.

The only icicles were on vehicles that went for a spin. Otherwise, it was too cold for any melting, a crucial element in icicle formation:

The temperature forecast for the next 10 days seems likely to leave us with snow on the ground for quite some time. It's not warming up anytime soon.

Yeah, more snow

Winter seems to mean business this year, as we got more snow yesterday afternoon and evening. It made my commute home last night fairly exciting. I think I managed to get in there right before serious snow removal began. It was only four inches, but it was an aggressive four inches. Funny how we bracketed Christmas with early snow events (for this area, anyway) but still managed to avoid a white Christmas. Alas. Anyway, when I walked out the door last night to walk the dogs after my arrival home, this is what I saw:

Looking right:

Looking left:

Notta lotta snow, but the third decent snowfall this winter. We go entire winters with no real snow. This could get interesting.

It is, by the way, 12 degrees outside right now, headed for 3 degrees. Pretty brisk.