Up in the mountains for a NAI interpretation workshop, the unrealized (so far) threat of snow and ice has seemed like a warning drumbeat.
Four to five inches of snow! freezing rain! howling winds! and blizzard warnings! have been part of the forecast the last few days. The predictions were dire enough to have my gardening companion (insist in his companionly way) that I go up early to get ahead of the weather (which was quite nice enough, as it turned out). And I'm delaying going 'down the hill' -- the Blue Ridge Escarpment - until the morning, when the sun is supposedly to be shining.
Thankfully, only the winds have materialized with a dusting of snow this evening so far, although it's plenty cold with the wind chill down in the teens. The predicted blizzard seems to have gone north to inundate the mid-Atlantic states.
In the South and the mid-Atlantic states of the U.S., we're not used to snow and ice at all, and this year's El Nino weather pattern seems to be bringing us plenty.
Venturing forth briefly this evening, I saw a raccoon bounding briskly (looking like a cat) up the hill into the front of the apartment next to our small house in the mountains. My brain looked at the image and thought 'cat' -- but then sorted out that the stripes on the tail were distinctive and that the ears and nose were not cat-like at all.
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