More snow. How nice.

More snow started to fall yesterday afternoon, shortly after I walked back across town after having spent another Saturday night in my new house. The snow had already been falling heavily to our South, in Maryland, and it was reaching us several hours later. By the time the Oscars got underway, there was about another inch of fresh snow on top of the remnants of the Valentine's Day Storm.

This morning I woke up bright and early at 5:00 and switched on the TV to see what the local TV clown/meteorologist had to say. He's a funny guy, quite entertaining and informative, but sometimes it gets a little annoying when you have to wait through all the screaming and shouting and silly animations and assorted antics when all you want to know is how much snow had fallen the previous night. Eventually he got around to it, while dancing around in a sweatshirt and a hat (Look, Ma! No coat!) and announced that only about an inch of light, fluffy snow had fallen. That's odd, I thought. We already had an inch when I went to bed.

I made my way upstairs, switched on the computer (it takes a long time to boot up), made the coffee, made breakfast, and went to the front porch to get the newspapers. One of them was there, but the other was nowhere to be seen. The porch looked like it had more than an inch of light, fluffy snow. About three inches more.

I brought in the paper and pulled out a push-broom. Light, fluffy snow would not be a problem for a push-broom.

The snow was neither light nor fluffy. We had four fresh inches of dense, slushy snow.

A half-hour later (I had to wait until at least 6:00 for the sake of the neighbors) I was outside running the snowblower. The slush poured out of the snowblower's blow-hole like the stuff from a Slurpee machine. It took me a while to clean my car, my mom's car, the driveway, the street in front of our house, the sidewalk along the street, and the sidewalk leading to our front door. Then it was time for a shower and a trip across town to clean up there. Fortunately it looks like my neighbor got his snowblower running again, and he did the sidewalk in front of his house, my house, and my other neighbor's house. I only had to deal with the steps and the slate sidewalk at the bottom of the steps.

I know we've had a lot less snow this year than in some - maybe most - years. Still, more than half of the Valentine's Day accumulation is still out there, unmelted, and now it's been topped by this. I think we've had our fill of snow. Now, if only this stuff will melt gradually, instead of suddenly...