“An early spring for you and me”

T

he groundhog said we’d have an early spring. Prior to that rodent’s statement, our winter had been relatively mild, but within a week the snow storms began to roll in—seemingly one right after the other. And now it is late March. Spring break is next week. And last night, at around 4:30 PM small, fluffy flakes of frozen water began drifting down from the sky.

4:30 PM

I grabbed my camera to take some pictures to post to Facebook. (Whatever did we do before we were able to share our “Ugh!” moments with a disinterested public?) But then... just a few hours later, when it should have been dark outside, I noticed that it was quite bright. So I checked outside and found about half an inch of snow covering everything. And the flakes continued to fall.

Approximately 7:30 PM

May I remind you that I live in Virginia—the capitol of the Confederate States of America, otherwise known as “the southern states” (“southron” in CSA/British orthography).

Within minutes, the phone rang. It was the county school system informing us that school was going to be closed the next day due to the wintry weather. This would be the fourth such school closing in the past three weeks. What exactly is going on here?

So I woke up this morning to find this:

Approximately 7:00 AM today

The view from our front porch

Our neighbor’s house across the street

The view from our back porch—facing south

The view from our back porch—facing east

The side of our house—facing east