There’s Snow Place Like Home when the Weather Outside is Frightful

Gia and Harper. They sound like trendy baby names, and not winter storms, the first of which snuck in with all its snowy beauty and said surprise, dropping eight inches of snow – double the forecasted amount for my area – onto the landscape. Harper was more disappointing and uncooperative, baffling meteorologists who didn’t know exactly what it would mean for central Indiana until even a few hours before its arrival. Projected snow totals ranged from four to eight inches or more (some even said twelve was possible). In reality we just got a bunch of rain for several hours; the ice, sleet and snow didn’t arrive until several hours later than it was supposed to, severely cutting down on accumulation. Both storms arrived on consecutive Saturdays, and thus warranted Friday night stops at the crowded grocery store after work to stock up on provisions so I wouldn’t have to leave the house the next two days.

Gia provided our first snowfall of the winter on January 12.  There was an ice festival going on that weekend I’d planned to attend, but I decided to stay home because the roads were treacherous.  I ended up having my own little snow festival instead, making gnomes, penguins and cats from snow using snow molds.  You can see my photos and read about how I made them on my blog at this link.  I also walked my neighborhood taking photos of the snow, which was so pretty.  It wasn’t that windy or unreasonably cold, and it was really peaceful out.  It was still snowing so it was fun to look at the live photos on my iPhone later and see the snow falling.  The snow was very wet though and soon my coat and everything else I was wearing was soaked through.  Even though I kept my phone in my pocket when I wasn’t using it, eventually its camera button stopped working because water got trapped inside my Otterbox case, so I headed home to dry it out.

Usually our first snow arrives around Christmas and I’m able to get photos of Christmas decorations in the snow, which always look so nice.  But most people had taken theirs down, so I only got a few photos, most of them from my yard!  Snow makes everything look pretty in my neighborhood and completely transforms the landscape, especially the trees.  That boring, dead, dirty look of winter is temporarily frosted over by a beautiful white winter wonderland.  The small houses in my neighborhood look like a little snow village and you can almost imagine some of these scenes inside a snow globe.

I walked up to the front of my neighborhood to the busy street the entrance is on, and saw a car trying unsuccessfully to exit the neighborhood across the street.  I watched for about three minutes and never did see it make it out on to the main road.  That reinforced my decision to stay in that weekend as a good one.   Also, the roads hadn’t been plowed yet in my neighborhood, so eight inches of snow made for interesting walking.  I walked in the tire tracks of the few brave SUVs who had ventured out.  I discovered a really pretty tree with red berries I’d never noticed before.  The snow caps on the berries were so cute.

Cold, icy winter storm Harper arrived on January 19 and didn’t provide as much beauty to the landscape, only about three inches of snow and a few eight inch drifts from the fierce winds.  The next day, the temperatures dropped and the wind died down, and I got to experiment with frozen bubble photos so not all was wasted from this storm. You can read about the bubbles and see photos of them on my blog at this link.  It was too cold to walk the neighborhood so I didn’t venture beyond my yard.

Since then, we’ve only had snow accumulations of an inch or less at a time.  But it’s been super cold so every little bit seems to stick around for a while, and there has been flurries, snow, sleet or wind almost every day.  We’re currently in the middle of our coldest snap yet, with -38 degrees Fahrenheit wind chill and -13 actual temperatures yesterday.  Hopefully February will be a warmer month.  The weekend forecast looks promising to start it off! Stay warm, friends!  How is winter where you live?  Tell me how you’re surviving it in the comments below.