A certain kind of quiet...

There is a certain kind of quiet -- almost a peaceful silence -- after a serious snowfall.  Except for the occasional sound of the wind, that is the silence of this morning. It is an impressive start to December here in Northwest Pennsylvania for sure. Not much is moving.

Just last week I was writing to a friend, who is in the sunny South for the winter, about how she was missing the end of a November that had suddenly turned dreary -- I described that the leaves were now all down and blowing about if they were not too mud covered and clotted together under bushes.  I described the situation as an ugly prelude to winter that makes one appreciate the first snows.  Really?  Obviously that was written by someone who had temporarily forgotten how the beauty of the first snow may hide the dirt, but what it really does is blanket and blind.  It's the combination of the "b's". 

I was driving home yesterday in the early evening and watched as cars were literally plowing the roadway as they struggled to get home.  Anyone who lives around here is familiar with that and knows that I am not exaggerating.  I literally needed 4-wheel drive to get up my driveway.  I thought at the time that it was a good thing that I remembered the road home so that I could stay on it.  The thing is, I was only driving about a quarter of a mile and even that was scary.  That's the thing about blankets of snow -- very pretty, but you don't know what is under them.  

As for snow induced blindness, we are not talking here about not being able to see because of the glare off snow in sunshine, although that is a real thing. It's why people around here carry sunglasses in their vehicles in the winter even though most days are a bit on the sunless side.  What we are taking about it how it is necessary to drive in the dark on low beams because one cannot see a damn thing if the high beams are on.  Anyone who lives in snow country knows exactly what I mean. That is the problem if there isn't any wind.  If the winds are blowing drifting snow -- that is a whole other thing... a potential nightmare of total lack of visibility.  I am not even going to talk about that. I will just say that we call it a white out. That describes it perfectly.  Think of the reverse of a black out.  It's just as scary... maybe even scarier, because shining a light on it makes it worse.

I have a cousin who lives in Eastern Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, who jokes about me living in Siberia.  This morning, I think he has a good point.  It sort of feels like it at the moment.