It Snowed
I suppose most people would have found it encouraging that on Friday the days started getting longer. Up here in the rainy wind-swept wilds of Northern California, it was not a particularly noticeable occurrence, except for those people familiar with things calendrical. It should also be noted that though the days are getting longer, the sun is still getting up later, and will until early January, but this, too, would not have been observed with the weather we are having.
It actually snowed on Thursday, which is maybe the third such event since I moved here five years ago. Most of Redding didn't get the white stuff, but Casa Linda is perched at 1100 feet, so in the mid-afternoon, the temperature dropped just a coupla extra degrees to produce the white stuff. Big honkin' flakes that at first were just beautiful and then created a coupla inches of slush. That would have been fine if it were just building the water table, but the stuff coated the satellite dishes and yours truly had to clear off the icy coating a half-dozen times before the temperature climbed back toward a seasonal norm. Living out past civilization, we need the two dishes, one for "entertainment" -- television and music -- and the other for the computer, which downlinks at semi-DSL speeds and uploads at three times the phone line, when it's working properly.
The snow wasn't a big problem, at least not in our corner of the world, though it might have been. Branches got coated with snow and ice, and had the wrong trees fallen over, I think the poor folks working for the utilities would have tantrum'd off to wait for better weather, or spring, whichever came first. In truth, they work incredibly hard and long hours, and are remarkably successful in their efforts to keep the juice flowing. I'm sure there are thousands of people in the north state who aren't as generous in their thoughts, but as they are still without power, this essay won't particularly upset them.
Particularly upset were the truckers who had to park along the interstate for most of thirty-six hours as snow and ice closed I-5 from just north of Redding for a hundred miles north. Motels filled up, which must have made some proprietors happy, though they no doubt wore sympathetic expressions as they ka-chinked their cash registers with unexpected pre-Christmas lucre. Not only doesn't it usually snow up here, but never this early. So much for never.
I was up several times during the night, checking to make sure everything was intact, surviving winds which gusted over 40 mph. The mercury must have risen to the melting point around four in the ayem, because that's when the slush on the deck melted and disappeared. By the time I finished preparing the chicken cordon bleu for Linda's midday office party, the snow had melted from my car and the roads were just wet. In fact, when it was time to deliver the goods, there was an actual break in the storm track, which lasted almost until I returned home.
There's plenty of wood stacked out by the shed, and enough by the front door so that we can keep a fire going until the edge of hell freezes over. The larder is filled with the remainder of the chicken -- quite delicious, by all accounts -- and other goodies that expand the waistline notoriously at this time of year. So while we can offer brows furrowed with condolence to those who have come up on the wrong side of the weather, we can quietly enjoy our nesty comfort while the storms beat futilely against the outside walls.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
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