Snow

In the last couple of days, the northeastern US has received snowfalls large enough that they may even have made the news in Australia (although I haven't received any enquiries from you, so I guess not). New England actually seems to have been spared: the falls were centred around Washington and Philadelphia, and spread up to New York or so. Overnight, the storm moved north to us, but had obviously tempered.

I think we had a little over 10 centimetres of snow, beginning while I was asleep and continuing until around 2:30 pm. It's interesting looking out my window at the snow falling. For some reason, it mostly seems to fall up! Perhaps that's just because of the shape of the building, or some optical illusion, but I guess it's also because snow is so much lighter than rain.

I went out in the snow this evening to go to Mass at Harvard (the MIT chapel has closed down for Christmas, and while Harvard is not the second closest church, I do like to be part of a student community). It was my first experience of "snowy" snow (I've seen "melty" and "icy" snow a few times each: I'm sure you can imagine the contrast I'm making). The first thing I noticed was that it didn't feel wet! I didn't actually touch it, but it didn't feel wet underfoot. I'm sure that would have changed had I got more than a few snowflakes in my shoes (I wasn't wearing snow boots, but my leather shoes are nice and sturdy).

It wasn't too cold, either: minus four degrees, and little wind (last week I walked in the same direction when it was minus eight with 50 km/h winds, and that was cold). I had a rather pleasant walk up to Harvard.

I had allowed far more time than I needed (in case slippery snow slowed me to a snail's pace; in fact I think it didn't slow me much), so I wandered around Harvard for a while. I took a couple of photos: I've attached the better. The earlier one was slightly washed out, because the snow was so white. Sunset helped the second.

While walking around, I felt that it was time for the orchestra to begin playing, because I associate snow with ballet performances (I haven't been to many ballet performances: just Swan Lake, which wasn't even ballet, Nutcracker, and Giselle, but that has been enough to associate them with snow).

The weather should start to warm up on Wednesday, reaching four degrees on Friday). Precipitation is expected on Friday, and if it is indeed a little warmer, it is likely to be rain and spoil the chance of a white Christmas.