Clanging from the Severn to the Tyne

[sovay]

Rabbit, rabbit!

I see we have achieved April Fool's Day Blizzard II: The You've Got to Be Kidding Me. When I went to bed, it was just a lot of sleety rain and slushy ice that I shoveled off the front steps in the hope that it wouldn't freeze into a solid glassy layer overnight. By the time I woke up, it was snow. Lots and lots of wet and sticking snow that I am going to shovel off the front steps—and the front walk, and the driveway, and wherever else my mother needs—as soon as I can stomach it. The pussy willow and the forsythia are flowering bewilderedly in the back yard. There is a robin hopping around the broken conifer branches with a sort of reality-defying cheer. Whee.

In the meantime I dreamed about an outdoor production of a Shakespeare play that doesn't exist (with boatloads of numinous greenwood, so I'm sorry—doesn't it feel like Shakespeare should have written a play about Robin Hood, with fairies?) and winged cats going into space (which someone must have written and published in the '80's), neither of which derives obviously from watching Dan Duryea in Cy Endfield's The Underworld Story (1950), re-reading Gypsy Rose Lee's The G-String Murders (1941), and reading half of Lee's Mother Finds a Body (1942) before bed.

We who are about to shovel salute you. This is ridiculous.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

That is ridiculous (the weather). Here it's too warm, but that's more logical; you're a bit far south for late snow, even by last year's standards. (Another friend lives in midstate NY, where it snowed close to May Day last year, IIRC. Or perhaps it was the year prior. Recent enough to part of the madness, anyway.) Sorry, robins and happy blooms! :/

[davidgillon]

I did once see snow in June while growing up, but apparently I grew up in the snowiest place in England (didn't find that stat out until a few months ago).

Here it was a lovely sunny day (with April showers later) and the cherry trees are blossoming. OTOH a couple of hundred miles north (i.e. snowiest place in England), my mother reported snow last week and snow at Easter isn't actually too unusual.

[sovay]

I did once see snow in June while growing up, but apparently I grew up in the snowiest place in England (didn't find that stat out until a few months ago).

Congratulations? (Where is that?)

[davidgillon]

Weardale in County Durham. The stat is from the weather-station in a little village called Copley, which is a few minutes drive from my home town of Bishop Auckland. Snow in June was exceptional, but if you go up onto the moors at the head of the Dale you could often find a drift or two in sheltered nooks year round.

[sovay]

Snow in June was exceptional, but if you go up onto the moors at the head of the Dale you could often find a drift or two in sheltered nooks year round.

That's pretty neat, actually.

[thistleingrey]

Ah! Makes sense that the snowiest place in England would be in County Durham, but I admit I'd never thought about it before your comments. Thank you!

The cherry trees where I am have dropped dead blooms, and a few have fruit--but the blooms came mid-January. Most of the flowers survived the night-time frosts we've had between then and late March.

[sovay]

you're a bit far south for late snow, even by last year's standards.

It has snowed this late—and on this date—before, but that doesn't mean I think it's a good idea!

(Another friend lives in midstate NY, where it snowed close to May Day last year, IIRC. Or perhaps it was the year prior. Recent enough to part of the madness, anyway.)

Yikes.

Sorry, robins and happy blooms!

The crocuses have definitely had it.

[movingfinger]

[Sucks teeth] I vividly remember the May 1977, storm which left enough to ski on, eight inches or thereabouts, and I did for about a mile, the snow lumpily dripping from clusters of young green leaves. It did not last long, of course...

[sovay]

I vividly remember the May 1977, storm which left enough to ski on, eight inches or thereabouts, and I did for about a mile, the snow lumpily dripping from clusters of young green leaves.

Nice!

I think my personal favorite weather-timing story (that I lived through) was the year the Fourth of July fireworks over Casco Bay were preempted by a spectacular thunder-and-lightning storm. We stayed up and watched it and it was absolutely just as good.