Snowfall at Last

So, here I sit on my day off, looking out the window at thoroughly white scenery. Genuine snowfall. The ground is covered.

For the very first time this winter. Yeah, middle of January. And we've got a genuine snowfall at long last.

No real snowfall this winter until mid-January. This is crazy for northeast Iowa.

Oh, we did get 3 inches back in mid-October. Didn't last long, though there was a day there when you didn't want to be out on the road if you didn't have to. But, coming so early in the season, it didn't really count.

Ever since, it's been a slight, fleeting dusting here, and a few random snowflakes there. Nothing this winter that's amounted to a bona fide snowfall. Christmas came and went, no snow. Around the New Year we got a mild dusting of snow, hardly enough to count, and nothing you'd notice a day or two later.

Until this weekend. Saturday we got a little snow. Not much, but enough that the gravel roads out here were slick driving Sunday. Then yesterday afternoon the snow started falling. It's been falling on and off, nothing heavy, but this morning I can see it out my window, still falling right this moment. Genuine snow at last.

As usual the weathermen try to crank up the melodrama: they were forecasting "6 to 8 inches." Ha! On a weather site this morning, it looks like towns in this area actually got between 3 and 4 inches. Which bears out my usual snow-forecast rule of thumb: Whatever they predict, expect at most a little more than half of the minimum snowfall forecast.

And up here high atop Wheatland Ridge, I'd say we actually got more like 2 inches. No blizzard. But it is a genuine snowfall, ground covered white here in northeast Iowa, for the very first time this winter.