The unofficial start of Winter

I saw the first sure sign of Winter's arrival today.

In the U.S. the official start of the seasons is tied to the equinoxes and solstices: Spring begins on an equinox (when day and night - at the equator, at least - are equal in length, with the days getting longer and the nights shorter on the following days), the Summer begins on a solstice (the longest day and shortest night of the year, again, at the equator), Autumn begins with another equinox, and Winter with another solstice. This year the Winter Solstice is December 21, so until that date it's officially Fall - in the U.S., at least.

We had our first snowfall here in Northeastern Pennsylvania nore than five weeks ago, back on October 25th. Around here snow in the Fall is no more unusual than snow in the Spring - neither is uncommon, although the heaviest snofalls still take place in what are technically the Winter months.

One of the signs that Spring has finally arrived each year is the sighting of the first Robin. The return of this beautiful songbird tells us that more are on the way, and soon the landscape will be full of blossoms and birdsong - even if the sighting takes place technically before the Spring equinox.

And what are the signs that Winter has really arrived, even if the calendar says otherwise? Well, snow for one, particularly the sort of snow that we had today: what I call hypnosnow, a dense, fast-moving snow which produces a hypnotic perspective effect in your car's headlights that resembles the Starfield Simulation (or Flying Through Space) screensaver that comes standard with Windows, and can force traffic to a crawl. I drove through a few miles of this today, and it sure does suck.

But that's not the surest sign of Winter's arrival. No, I always count the sighting of the first SUV on its roof as a sign that Winter is here. SUV drivers generally share a delusion of invincibility and invulnerability, a sense that they command the road and all other vehicles, and indeed the road and its attendant medians and guardrails and rock outcroppings are subject to their whim - a notion that physics frequently dispels.

Well, today I didn't see an SUV on its roof, but it turned out that the thing that was holding up traffic less than three miles from my house was an SUV that had plowed into the center guard rail and managed to tear its entire front bumper off. So I guess Winter is really and truly here!

Now, dammit, where did I put my snow shovel?