Snow on Palm Sunday, March 25, 2018

I woke up this morning to find ice in the water dish we leave out for the "outside" cats, the stable clowder currently consisting of Little Girl (who is now eight years old), Mr. Black, and Mr. Orange. (It also serves various raccoons, skunks, opossums, and other woodland critters who like to visit.) The air didn't feel very cold, but the thermometer showed that it was 25 degrees. I looked at the car windshield and saw that it was clear of frost or ice, probably because the cold of the last week or so has sucked all the moisture out of the air, so there was nothing to deposit onto the windshield.

A few hours later I stepped out to head to church. The back porch was sprinkled with water. Had the cats spilled the water dish? Or...I looked up and saw that the landscape was covered in snow, snow that was still coming down in picturesque downy flakes.

When I got to church it was still snowing, thought the snowflakes seemed to have gotten smaller. The snow had piled up enough that an usher had to clear it off the steps.

Snow falling on church, March 25, 2018

By the time Palm Sunday services ended, so had the snow. The sun had come out. The snow that coated the roads, sidewalks, and steps was gone, and the rest was rapidly melting - except in the shadows. Snow-covered cars parked in shade were still snow-covered.

We found an example of this when we got home. My broken and soon-to-be-scrapped 1996 Toyota Tercel with over 400,000 miles was still snow-covered; it is parked in our driveway, and is shaded by the house. Snow not in the shadow of the house did not last long in the full light of the midday sun. A few hours later, all of the new snow was gone.

Perhaps I was premature in wondering if Winter had had its last gasp. This is actually too early to be called "onion snow" (which I just found out is a regionalism, and a Pennsylvania Dutch one at that.) How much more snow can we look forward to?