I’d been dreaming of a white Christmas, but yesterday I began to wonder if that was such a good idea. We got hit by a good old-fashioned blizzard, code name Winter Storm Draco (I didn’t realize that winter storms had names). The closest weather monitoring station to our house (Middleton, WI) reported 19.5 inches as of about 10 PM last night. In addition to all of the snow, this storm was accompanied by frequent flashes of lightning and rumbles of thunder. I saw and heard them on Wednesday night and continued to hear the thunder during the day yesterday. That added some additional interest to the storm.
This morning the wind had stopped and the sun rose in an intense winter-blue sky, that kind of sky that is made a deeper blue by its juxtaposition to the brilliantly sparkling white snow. The temperature hovered around 32 F all day yesterday but was 18 F when I got up this morning. Winter can be a challenge, especially to those people who lost power yesterday, but it sure can be beautiful. Here are a few photos that I took yesterday morning while walking around the neighborhood during the heavy snow.
By the way, the weathermen and women were right when they predicted this storm, but the Mayans didn’t get that end-of-the-world thing right. That means I’ve got a lot of last-minute Christmas shopping to do!