Christmas Snowstorm: Plop, drizzle, fizzle

Well, instead of another 8-10 inches of snow we got two or three inches of wet snow Thursday night and Friday morning, and a fair amount of drizzle and rain over the remainder of the day. The roads stayed mostly wet, though Dave did have a rather arduous drive on Highway 19 out to the interstate early yesterday morning to meet the rest of us at a family homestead in the south metro. We drove into St. Paul for delicious meals both Thursday evening and Friday afternoon and back home to Northfield in the early evening, the car thermometer reading between 37 and 34 degrees, with never a white-knuckle moment.

We dug out the very heavy wet snow from the driveway last night -- not much in inches, but a lot in weight -- but our muscles are becoming somewhat accustomed to this shoveling business lately and didn't complain too badly. (I asked my son, age 10, to help with the shoveling, but he had tossed his shovel down somewhere in the snow a couple of days ago and it was covered up and no longer to be found.) This morning, judging from the sounds made by the dog's feet when she went outside, everything has hardened to a crunchy crispness, so I'm glad we got the shoveling done.

Speaking of animals walking in the snow, on Thursday morning I found these tracks by our front door. Although I wish they were something wild and exotic, I must conclude* that they are tracks of a domestic cat. Ah well.


*Here is the animal track chart I've referred to before, provided by the Ohio DNR.