I took today’s photo earlier this week during an especially nice sunrise. Already, it looks wildly out of date to me. The forecast for tomorrow is for 5-9 inches of snow, so a scene like this one is already passé.

It’s not out of the norm for my area to see a late October snow. It’s just that they don’t usually arrive the day after the first frost and they aren’t usually measurable. Any snow that arrives when many leaves are still on the trees is bad. The snow will cling to the leaves and weigh down the branches they are on. The branches break and fall on power lines and roads. The trees break and fall on who-knows-what.

And I am not yet prepared for winter. My chickens and their pen will need to be moved to a sheltered spot tonight, something I normally wouldn’t do for another 3-4 weeks. And even then I usually have more than 24 hours notice of an impending storm to get everything organized and everyone moved. This particular storm was pooh-poohed all week by the forecasters: an early snow, so what, no worries. It was only this morning that the forecast went from pooh-pooh to 5-9 inches.

While this snow may well be a pretty snow, it won’t be a pretty weekend dealing with it. Unless the snow goes somewhere else. Or is all rain. I can only hope.  But for now, enjoy the sunrise.