The Presidents' Day Week Snow Show

As my not-favorite winter proceeded into its final 30 days, it brung along with it another arctic vortex just in time to collide (or collude!) with a couple of moist low pressure systems, and North Carolina got a mid-week snow event.

Broken across two days, Wednesday and Thursday had various periods of lovely cascading flakes and thoroughly bone-chilling temps.

It was a hard one to forecast, and that caught some school systems in a bind. I wish people could be more understanding of the difficulty faced by superintendents, but I believe they make the best decision they can, and they also realize that somebody somewhere is going to think you could have been a better decider, and someone else is always going to think you should have decided sooner or waited later.

The dusting we got to begin with was sufficient to attract its own form of curiosity and entertainment for the marvelous pups of Roediger House, but elsewhere this event doled out cruelty to varying degrees.

Wednesday did not offer a major accumulation but it sure did create treachery for those who had to be on the roads. I was glad to be at home.

In the bracing 25°F start of day Thursday, as another squall rolled through Winston, it began as the exceedingly-rare graupel: that dippin’ dots-style frozen precipitation that is also known as soft hail, snow pellets, granular snow, or pearl barley. Scarlett was happy to gather some of it as she waited to pounce on Sumner after his morning business:

She was even willing to bring a sample into the house with her:

But then we got to watch an extended period of that thick swirling tumble of flakes and all around us succumbed to that blanket of white. By afternoon, there was bright sunshine and a lot of surface melting occurred even though it did not warm up that much.

In the quiet of Friday morning, I was glad for hot coffee and a warm perch by the fireplace hearth for my usual day-starting routines, all the more glad that our even colder start to the day did not require my presence in its midst.

One might be hopeful that last Friday’s frigidity was a last flailing grasp for this winter of my discontent, as temps are returning to hospitable territory as this week begins. My glimpse of home-shopping bluebirds again at the house outside the kitchen bay, while not a great photo, was a further boost to my spirits.