First Snow of the Season

They forecasted a little snow earlier this week, but it never came. So when they forecasted it for yesterday, I dismissed it as a probability. Cowgrit told the boys about the forecast, and got them all excited for snow. I felt that was a little cruel, as I really didn’t expect anything.

Then at around 3:00 in the afternoon, it started snowing. Small flakes at first, but lots of flakes. After half an hour, the flakes were bigger, just as many, and started sticking to the ground.

I took the boys out walking in the snow, and they loved it. It usually only snows one to three times a season, here in the South (unless you live in the mountains), so we don’t have real snow attire for the boys. The boys ended up just like I did when I was a kid and it snowed: cold and wet. Cowgrit and I have some good snow clothes, because we’ve been skiing a few times (West Virginia and Colorado), and we are past growing out of what we wore two years ago.

In this area, if you buy snow clothes for young kids, they’ll grow out of them before they actually have a need to wear them. Cowgrit bought Calfgrit7 some good snow clothes several years ago (when he was Calfgrit3-4), but he only wore them one or two days ever.

The snow only dusted the ground this time. There’s really nothing to play in. One of these days we’re going to take the boys to the mountains somewhere and let them see and experience “real” snow.

We get an ice storm about every other year, and a blizzard about once a decade. If snow actually stick to the roads in a noticeable amount, our cities pretty much shut down. Transplanted Yankees think this is funny — that people down in the South can’t handle a little snow and ice. But it’s not that we as a people can’t handle it, it’s that our infrastructure is not prepared for it. I read an article in the local newspaper a few years ago (during our last blizzard) that said our entire state has as many snowplow trucks as the city of Chicago has.

I remember seeing a Christmas episode of In the Heat of the Night (80s TV series with Carroll O’Conner) where it snowed on Christmas day, in Mississippi. That must have been a Christmas miracle.