Spring in the 716

Here’s the scene in my back yard, Sunday, March 27:

Ayup.

It’s funny about this area: we always get snow this late in the year. One recent year we actually got snow on Mother’s Day, which is still six or seven weeks away. This is not unusual. Granted, snows this late in the year don’t generally pile much on (unless you live in the hillier climes downwind of Lake Erie, areas which are ten to twenty miles south of Casa Jaquandor), but as much as I really do like snow, generally by St. Patrick’s Day I’m emotionally done with the stuff.

Being vexed by snow this late in the year is one thing, but what always gets me is how surprised a lot of people in this region are by it. Every year, we get our first post-equinox snow forecast, and I hear a lot of “Oooooh, I thought we were done with it for this year!” It amazes me that people can live in a place for years and still be caught by surprise by something that happens every year. Weird.

I continue to believe that Buffalo’s winters really wouldn’t get nearly the bad rap they do if spring here wasn’t like this: two months of mostly gray-and-muddy, punctuated by a random stray 50-degree day here or there and more often by a snowfall. We don’t start seeing real, honest green around here until mid-May, and I think a lot of people just mentally combine the cruddy two months of spring into the actual winter. And yes, it does get old. So I look out on our new fresh bed of snow, and all I can muster is, “Well, at least we don’t have to wipe off muddy dog paws today.”

Here’s the same photo from above, with a Prisma filter applied. Just because.

And I’ll probably get to take another just like it before long!

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3 Responses to Spring in the 716

  1. Roger says:

    Sometimes, people get agitated by a shot of cold weather. It’ll be a high of 29 today. But it’s BEN 60 this month. It’ll be 60 in three days. Whatever. It’s March.

  2. Roger says:

    That is BEEN. Early morning mistyping…

  3. CYNTHIA HOBSON says:

    I live in Central Texas, where every season except summer oscillates wildly between freezing and tropical (summer is unrelenting). Sometimes the weather changes over a period of a few days and sometimes over a period of a few hours. Still people complain that they have to keep moving their potted plants inside the house to keep them from freezing. They are always surprised.

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