Tuesday we had a snow day. The Boy was so thrilled at the prospect of playing in the snow that it really didn’t matter that there was no snow to speak of. All Monday evening he was talking about getting to play in the snow, getting to make a snow man, throw snowballs, shovel snow with his backhoe.
I knew that there was little chance of snowball fights, snowmen, or much else. But I’d also known that a bigger storm was coming later in the week. A real storm. So I reassured the Boy that we would have plenty of snow to play in come Thursday.
The Boy didn’t mind the small amount of snow, though. Snow is snow, and as long as it was something he could shove around with his toys, he was thrilled.
We were all excited about Wednesday’s storm, though. They kept shifting the start time, further and further back, from late afternoon to early evening, but the intensity only grew. Three to five inches eventually became a possibility up to ten inches — a real snow storm.
Wednesday during class when students asked when certain assignments were due, I kept saying things like, “If this storm is anything like they’re saying it will be, we won’t be coming back until Monday, so we’ll make it due then.”
Finally the snow began, and it looked so promising, falling so thick and hard that it was possible even to capture it in a picture. I thought of the few great snow storms of my youth in southwest Virginia, where it rarely snowed but every few years would let loose a great storm that piled drifts three or more feet deep. Snow so deep that one had to pack it down before sledding was even a remote possibility. Snow that turned everything into a white blanket. Of course there’s no comparing that to the seven winters I spent in southern Poland, the winters that were the norm of K’s youth, where there was so much snow that even I got sick of it.
The governor had already declared a state of emergency, and all the reporters, after literally reporting on half an inch of snow Tuesday with giddy delight, were all probably flushed with anticipation. The school district canceled school before we’d even completed Wednesday’s schedule, and friends posted pictures on social media of virtually empty bread aisles in local supermarkets.
But when we woke up this morning, expectant, we found a repeat of Tuesday, a thin layer of slush that seemed destined to melt shortly after lunch.
Local news web sites quickly offered stories explaining what happened. “The moisture was there,” meteorologists explained, “but the temperature just popped up two degrees and that changed everything.” Our official total, as opposed to five or more inches, was 0.8 inches. Further north there were totals more like what we were promised, but nothing really that impressive. Headlines developed through the day: “National Weather Service stands by Upstate snow forecast.” It seemed everyone was disappointed on one level or another.
Still, we had enough slush on the ground to roll a small snowman, enough slush to get in boots and make the Girl complain, enough slush to get the Boy cold in a few minutes and whining to go inside.
But not enough snow even to get all the ground damp.
We in the South take what we can get when it comes to snow, though. Supposedly areas of Alabama and Mississippi got close to ten inches, so perhaps by the time it got here — well, who knows. We had slush, we built a slushman, and headed in late morning knowing perfectly well that we would be going to school tomorrow.
