OUR WINTER WONDERLAND

There are no sleigh bells, no ice skating on the ponds, but there is snow, lovely white, fluffy, wet snow, lots of it. For the first time that I can ever remember, we have had a real snow in Fort Worth, officially twelve inches, in several places, fourteen inches of real snow. Not sleet, not ice pellets, not snow grains, not wintry mix,  but real, very real snow. And, to me, it was beautiful.


I don't think that I had ever seen anything so lovely. I didn't have to drive in it; I didn't have to work in it. All I had to do was watch it; and I did just that. It began Thursday morning just before four o'clock, just about the time I went to sleep. Wednesday afternoon it had been cold, cold and damp, the wind stinging when it hit my face; but I didn't think about that as I went to bed. I didn't look to see if the promised snow were beginning.

When I woke Thursday morning, my world was covered in snow, snow deep enough to have covered everything completely. Why, the meteorologists had predicted snow, but only enough to  cover the grass somewhat, not enough to stick in the streets. Besides, the temperature wasn't going to go below thirty-three, not cold enough for the snow to even stay around. But here it was, piled up on everything. I grabbed my camera and went outside. Each time, I looked at the temperature, it continued to read  33.                        


But once back inside, I got busy, doing I know not what; but I did think about the snow from time to time and when I would look out, the snow was still falling, big flakes, thick snow, covering everything. Snow piled up on tree branches, covered cars, completely blanketed the streets. It continued to snow, pausing only briefly for a few minutes in the afternoon.

Before dark, I went outside to find two of the guys who live around here building a wall of snow, block by block stacking the snow brick laying style into a flat pyramid as tall as they were. Yes, they had messed up the beautiful snow, but what they had built was a very good wall. On another lawn, someone else had attempted a snowman, but had apparently not known how and simply made a mess and ended with a very scrawny looking snow man. Not good.

Later that night, those same meteorologists were saying that the snow would surely end by midnight; but at midnight, it still continued to fall. Quiet, beautiful, still, the world I live in was completely covered in snow.


On FaceBook, everyone was posting their photos of the world in the snow. Snow for us was such a new thing, such an unusual thing, something we only see on TV news, that everyone was rushing to document this anyway they could. I wrote about it on FaceBook so that Friends from California to Florida to upper New York State could see our snow.
Everywhere else, the snow had left drifts in feet, not our inches; but our few inches were such a new thing for us that we compared our snow to their snow, even when they scoffed. 

Several of us had wondered why the snow continued to fall and yet when we measured the snow, it did not seem to really change. I never measured above four inches. And then I realized that with the temperature at 33 and 34, the snow was melting from the bottom. Only those with cumulative rain gauges would get a correct measurement. Only after everything was all over could we hear that we had had an official 12  1/2  inches of snow.


Friday morning, the sun was shining, the snow having stopped about four in the morning. It was still quiet, but the streets were rutted and the cars were moving. The main streets were clear; the sides streets, ice ruts; and everywhere the big trees so common in my part of town were heavily laden with snow ...  and breaking. 

It seems that those trees with  long branches loaded with leaves, the Live Oak and the Magnolias, held so much snow that the branches simply couldn't bear the weight and were splitting from the tree trunks and falling into the streets and into the yards. These were beautiful trees that had been such striking features in the yards of the lovely homes in this area. Now, so much of their branches were firewood.


And so, today, it has ended. The sun shines brightly and the constant drip of melting snow tells me that the snow will soon be gone. The temperature is in the forties today; will reach the fifties by Monday; and once again it will be Texas in the winter with most days, sunny days, green buds on many trees, and Spring, just around the corner.