Snow
We take a brief time out from European discoveries to announce: It is snowing.We don't get a lot of snow: Usually about the end of December we get two inches. Within 2 days, usually 1, it melts. Repeat about the end of January. Repeat at the end of February.
Once in a while we will get something larger. in 1993 we got 53 inches. In 2004, we started the new year by giving the kids an extra week of Christmas vacation, I guess the buses didn't like 2 feet of snow and 0 degrees F -- 20 degrees colder than normal! (The Korean Kid was complaining about our measly two weeks off, saying she got four weeks. Well, we tried.) That was also the year I discovered that Mommy Vans do not make good snowplows.
Sometimes the conditions are just right and it only melts a little each day, and we get some pretty decent icicles. This picture of my unicorns was taken 4 years ago.
The consequences of the normal pattern is that it takes the city forever to plow streets if we get real snow. Maybe they are repairing the equipment that they haven't used in 10 years?
So, we should get about an inch tonight. Enough to listen to the radio to see if we start school late. Most of the midwest would laugh at us.
It snowed on Christmas in 1996, the year of the Czech Kid. It snows on Christmas of 1998, the year of the Chinese Kid. Other than that, you have to go back to 1956 to get snow on Christmas.
It was fun to watch the exchange students react. Tonight I could barely understand one of the Taiwanese, she was so excited. The Hong Kong girl is excited. The Czech boy is excited, because his town doesn't get much snow. (I don't know about the others, I didn't talk to them tonight.)
Even the Korean girl is excited -- she was out taking pictures of it. I told her that she had snow in Korea. Her response: "This is American Snow!"
A Brazilian boy about 10 years ago jumped into the snow to play and jumped right back out: "IT"S COLD!"
And then there was the Thai boy 8 years ago who kept asking us to move him to Florida, or he was going to die of the cold -- say, -10 to 10 F. He stayed and he is still alive -- back in Thailand, and presumably much warmer.
posted by Marion @ 10:08 PM
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