Overnight Dusting

Snow dusted the mountain yesterday evening. At first, I saw a gray cloud roll through the valley, and I briefly wondered if it was smoke or perhaps fog. The gray cloud rolled along the valley, through the forest, obscuring it tree by tree, slowly snaking around the trees like a cat rubbing at my ankles.

As it got closer, I realized it was snow, not fog or smoke. I watched as the little storm slowly approached, marching up the mountain, seeming to gobble up the trees one by one and hide them from my sight. When the snow arrived at the cabin, it was a dense little cloud of thick snow, momentarily creating a whiteout. For a few moments the snow was falling so thickly I couldn’t see anything but swirling snow.

The little storm disappeared almost as quickly as it arrived, continuing its march across the ski slopes and then down the other side of Roundtop. The photo today shows what it left behind.

Normally, to this point in the season, I could expect at least 30 inches of snow to have fallen already. This year, I haven’t had a full inch. My only measurable snow was .25 inches, and though snow has fallen on most evenings recently, it is never any more than what you see in the photo. Still, February, my snowiest month, lies ahead.