IN THE STILL OF THE NIGHT

Last Thursday, Feb. 11, was overcast, cold, and we had snow throughout most of the day. It had only begun to accumulate around noon, and white patches began to form. The school district announced at noon that school would be closed the next day as we anticipated much more snow and sub-freezing temps that night. The below freezing temps are not a big deal, but we usually don't have any kind of precipitation to go along with it. I've lived here 7 1/2 yrs., and this is my first time to experience snow on the ground. The strange thing was that around 2:30 p.m. the snow stopped and didn't resume for about two hours. By that time all the snow on the ground had melted. So we wondered if the schools and many enterprises had been a little premature in calling off everything for the next day. However, between 4:30 and 5:00 the snow began again. And it continued and continued.

This was a great learning experience for me. I learned that there is a measurement for snowfall and another for accumulation. We had 5.25 inches of snowfall and 2 inches of accumulation in all. Not record breakers, but enough to be pretty. . . and to do some damage. Just like the kids all over town I was excited about seeing snow on the ground, and here are a couple of pictures I took about 11 o'clock Thurs. night.









Don't you love the big oddly shaped snowflakes? Those are amazing to me. Anyway I went to bed anticipating the wonderful views I would have in the morning and set the clock to wake me at 6:30 a.m. I awoke at 6:35 but realized it was very quiet and that the electric clock face was black.






Yep! The power was out. I don't know how long it had been off, but my nose was cold. I quickly dressed, called the electric company to report the outage---their lines were filled with calls, and went out to take a few pictures. Here's that back view that you saw before.





Five hours later with no heat, a peanut butter sandwich, and Mack, the dog, on my lap for an hour and a half to get him warm, wimpy person that I am, I called Jaz and begged to bring the dogs and myself over to her house. She graciously said we could come. On the way there we saw many dingy small snow people built by delighted children and equally delighted adults. We don't get snow very often, you know.

To conclude all this I'll just say that when I drove home a little after three I found the power was back on. It probably came on shortly after we had left according to the clocks. We were very grateful to Jaz, but I'm embarrassed I didn't hold out a little longer. You just never know.

And here's a shot of the front of the house with its pretty snow which was gone in a few hours; but it's a fine memory.