the snow storm that fizzled

 Today is the 7th day of the 7th week, the 17th day of the 2nd month, the 48th day of 2024, and:

• Champion Crab Races Day
• Independence Day - Kosovo [ AKA the Republic of Kosovo] in 2008 from Serbia
• My Way Day - Frank Sinatra would be very flattered 
• National Airboat Day
• National Cabbage Day
• National Café au Lait Day
• National Indian Pudding Day
• National PTA Founders Day 
• National Public Science Day
• Random Acts of Kindness Day
• Red Sock Day - awareness of leg health and Peripheral Artery Disease
• Skate Shop Day
• Who Shall I Be Day - you can take this one seriously as in making life choices, or you can take it playfully.  I think it is a great day to live a Second Life....
• World Human Spirit Day
• World Pangolin Day
• World Whale Day
• and Voyager 1 is 22h 34m 19s of light travel time from Earth

Quote of the day:

" Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get."

~  Mark Twain [AKA Samuel Langhorne Clements] - American writer, humorist, essayist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer 

At the beginning of the winter, we were treated with very long explanations of how this season, despite the obvious warming trend of our cold season, could break the snow drought in the mid-Atlantic US. 

And, in all fairness, we have had many nor'easters sweep in that have dumped a lot of precipitation on us - but most of it has been rain as the temperatures have been very mild on the whole, only dipping now and then into below freezing.  Had it been a bit colder, we would've had a couple very spectacular snowfalls in January!  There was some hope [if you want to call it that] for the storm that hit last night - mid-February was a time that seemed to have some large snows in the past.  Certainly the forecasters encouraged us to think this would be if not a major storm, at least a substantial one with a possibility of up to 8" of the white stuff hereabouts.  

I'm not particularly a snow bunny - and I positively loathe having to drive in the stuff.  Oh I know how to as I spent two winters in Anchorage, but the melt often turns to ice and that I do not like at all, plus I really don't trust the other drivers to know how to deal with an unexpected slide.  But this was the beginning of a three day weekend and I work from home on Tuesday, so I figured the commute would be easy to handle by Wednesday.  So, I settled in to enjoy the show, and started taking pictures to chronicle the overnight storm as #theviewfromthebalcony, starting with a shot just after sundown.  The clouds were definitely thickening fast after a bright and sunny day

Around 10PM, the snow had started - a fine, steady stream of snowflakes too small to see individually, but looking like they meant business.  Despite the ground being rather warm for this time of year, it was laying fast and the mercury was hovering right around 33°, so it looked to be shaping up nicely, as this picture taken around 1 AM [yes I was up wandering about rather sleepily thanks to my bladder] shows

But just before sunrise [around 6:30 AM], there wasn't a lot of accumulation to see, and the roads were completely clear

And then the sun came out.  The storm had moved more quickly than originally forecast and hadn't had time to dump much on us.  Folks north and slightly west of us might still be getting some white stuff though

By 11 AM, there wasn't much left to see hereabouts.  Soon folks won't even have to clean off their cars!  

Late February / early March snows hereabouts are very unusual, so this storm was pretty much the last hurrah for Old Man Winter.

Those who love snow were really hoping for a scene more like this one that I took from the balcony nine years ago today.

And so, the weather forecast was a bust.  The storm arrived later, moved out faster, and just didn't have the same intensity as the models had predicted.  The zone of frontogenesis shifted north and instead of dumping on Maryland, Pennsylvania got buried.  

That's was PA gets for foisting a rodent on the rest of us as a weather prognosticator.