Sunday, October 30, 2011

Sleigh Bells Ring...Snow is Glistening

Can you guess what trick nature played on us today? That's right, it SNOWED! In October! Maybe that's not a big deal to all you Northern folk, but here in Southern PA it doesn't snow until December, occasionally in Nov. But NEVER in October. In fact the last time in snowed here in October was 39 years ago.
And we didn't just get light flurries on and off all day, no we got steady heavy snow for 10-12 straight hours. And it dumped on us about 8 inches of snow. 
The worst part of this storm is the fact that all the poor trees still have the majority of their leaves on, and with 8 inches of snow + their leaves tons of big branches of fallen of trees everywhere.
See that big branch? This was taken around 11 AM, but 2PM most of that tree had fallen off, their are now huge branches around the entire tree. It's very sad.
 A lot of power lines were knocked down by branches and over 53,000 people in my area have had no power all day. Thankfully our power has only gone of twice and both times it came back on within 5 minutes. 
I had a bunch of fun in the morning/early afternoon outside taking pictures. My mom and I took a walk down our road to get some cool pictures. She held an umbrella over my camera which was in a plastic bag (with a hole for the front of the lens to poke through) so that my camera was safe from the falling snow. 
This next picture might just be one of my new all time favorites:
In fact, I like it so much, that I decided to add the first few lyrics to "Winter Wonderland":



And look, we still have flowers blooming a fall colored leaves:


And there you have it. 
Our bizarre weather.
Although, considering the weird (weather wise) year we've had, maybe this shouldn't be too surprising. Starting with snow in April, (yeah, see snow in April never happens either, except this past April 1st we woke up to a blanket of snow). And then having an earthquake, hurricane, tropical storm flooding and record-breaking amounts of rain in August, September and now October. I guess it was appropriate to add an October mini-blizzard. :)
~Mary Kate