We are
going to the country of weather. What's that you say about snow? We're not
afraid of a little snow!
So we start
off with fifty-degree weather and sunny at home in shorebound Massachusetts,
feeling hot and overdressed in our winter clothes, for the great journey north
and west to the central New York, to the land of the Finger Lakes, Syracuse --
though mainly of course to my sister's place in Tully -- and, don't forget,
Lake Effect Snow. And before 6 p.m. that evening, leaving Gwen and Dave's house
for a restaurant outside Syracuse, we are driving directly into a horizontal knife-blast
of snow-white vectors aimed straight at our windshield, as the snow accumulates
rapidly around us.
It's a
local event. But we happen to be in just that local time and place, so it's a rather
significant event for us. And the wind is kicking.
I think we
must be living in a gentler clime. Around here we don't usually have snow when
the temperature freezes your nose (and all that emerges from it) to your face
the moment you stick it outdoors. If we get the occasional dose of brutal cold,
it tends not to snow at the same time. And when the white stuff does fall, it
hardly ever lines up at eye-level.
In the
event, the highly circumstantial "weather event" doesn't last that
long, or extend that far, or lead to much accumulation. It's just that driving
snow in that driving moment stays with one. We make it to the restaurant, the return-trip home
snow is not so horizontal, and we get back to our motel with nothing more
than a few slow-motion skids past an
intended turn.
Clear skies don't greet us the next morning, but it's not snowing either. This improvement
lasts for a fine morning visit, including a fabulous brunch with French toast not
the way Mother used to make it but reminiscent of the sugar and cinnamon
mixture she used to dress it with. Then the skies darken in a snap of the
fingers, and this little sprinkling -- not sugar, not cinnamon -- begins again.
Well isn't that cute, a few more flurries. Quite unpredictable weather around
here. We thought we had plenty of that in New England; but, no, these narrow bands of
precipitation sure have us beat. Then the little flurries turn gray and snarly
and the plot thickens along with the snow.
Since we
have a weatherman in the house (Gwen's husband Dave), we get a detailed
reading of the situation. One of those "narrow bands" of lake effect
snow is probing our way. It's clear sailing
not very far from us in one direction or another, but we happen to be in the here
and now, and the prognostication calls for a couple of inches potential accumulation
every hour for the next three hours: Cue mad rush for the coats and boots by for
the going-homers.
Conversations
trip into warp speed as generous-host gifts fall about us: daffodil bulbs from garden clean-up,
garlic bulbs from a bumper crop, a jar of homemade maple syrup. Tax advice for
our daughter from my brother. Reflections that the party of the first part, who
left a couple hours ago, are probably well out of that "narrow band" of
precipitation.
We drive
through the snow, through our finger of weather, because that's the way our road
goes, our son behind the wheel now (I appear to be taking snow off this year),
and pursue this first stage of our way home very carefully. A mere, slow,
fog-of-snow twenty minutes later, the "event" is over for us. We're
out of the band.
Damn, wish
I'd taken a picture. The sun shines for much of New York and the sky is
brilliant and blowy in Massachusetts: Nobody will believe what just happened.
It's our
little sneak preview of winter weather events. Watch out for those narrow
"bands" -- they play up a storm.
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