I woke up last Thursday morning around 6:30, as usual, snuggled up next to Jamieson in the bed in his room. After a few minutes, he made it clear that neither he nor I were going back to sleep. So I groped around for my glasses, sat up, and opened the curtains…
… to a snow-covered backyard.
Snow!
2.5 inches of it, to be precise.
The most wonderfully magical part about it was that I had no idea it was supposed to snow. Normally I am very diligent about following the weather forecast. I like to know what’s coming. Parenthood has not exactly taken that interest away, but it’s definitely left me with far less time and energy to check in on the weather every day. So when I opened the curtains to an unexpected field of sparkling white, it was quite a thrill!
We all got up and put on our shoes and coats and headed out to the backyard. Jamie wasn’t quite sure what to make of the snow. Last time he experienced it was on Christmas Eve and it didn’t really seem to register at that point.
He spent a little time mucking about and poking at it with his fingers. I had to leave for work soon, so we went inside and had breakfast.
It continued to snow all day long. My office closed at 3:00 because it didn’t seem to be letting up, and people in Texas freak out when there is any kind of winter precipitation, even in the tiniest amount.
The snow continued all afternoon and into the evening. We took Jamie outside for a while and this time, he was pretty excited about it. He stomped around and laughed and sat down and tasted the snow and generally had a great time.
Later in the evening, the snow was still coming down, and it was a really wet heavy snow. The branches of our crape myrtle trees were bowed down almost to the ground, so we went outside and tried to shake off as much snow as we could with a rake to try to prevent them from breaking. Doc did that several more times throughout the night. I think he saved the trees by doing that. There were so many tree branches down all over town by the next morning.
Work was cancelled for me (although I did a lot of work from home during the day) on Friday. The official snowfall total was 12.5 inches, an all-time record for our area, and making this the second snowiest year on record, to date. I measured 11 inches at our house. We were very lucky that we didn’t lose power and that our neighbor’s live oak tree didn’t drop any branches onto our cars parked underneath. Some of our friends had damage to house and cars from branches, and many more were without power for hours or days.
The amount was astounding. I have never seen this much snow in my life outside of a mountaintop.
You can click on any of the photos below to view a slideshow of the photos and video we took.
The unseasonable warmth of the past week collapsed under the weight of a wintry storm. Snow fell for hours. Tiny ice pellets coated my car.
