Well, it's May 10 and it's snowing at the farmette. ARRRRGGGHHHH. It snowed so much Friday night that it reached the shins of my wellies as I trudged out to measure the white stuff yesterday morning - 15 centimetres!
In researching why the heck we are experiencing this weather chaos, I found out that it's the dastardly POLAR VORTEX that's to blame.
Sounds like something from a science fiction movie. I imagine it as some bald-headed villainous character that breathes out frigid air and cackles evilly. OK off-topic now.
Actually, it's a low pressure system that has descended from the Arctic and planted itself right over the farmette. All right, a little bit bigger area than that. But it was nowhere near as snowy at my sister's place a mere 40 minutes away. Many of my buddies in other parts of the province didn't get hit quite so hard either. Sooooo. Maybe the Wilson-Harris-Harris-Wilson household is cursed. Not only are we still under a pandemic lockdown, we get to enjoy a second round of winter. Yahoooooo.
But being a person who likes to make lemonade out of lemons - or in this case a tall drink of online knowledge out of a crap-tonne of snow - I toddled onto the interweb in search of answers.
I not only learned all about the vortex, I have a new noun in my vocabulary. Graupel. It's super-cooled water droplets that collect on snowflakes. That's what was coming down. All my flower beds enjoyed a coat of graupel. Nice.
I remember driving through some pretty serious graupel in my not-so-much-younger days and it was not fun. Luckily we didn't need to drive anywhere this weekend.
Because we live in Grey County, we're usually very careful about not taking the winter tires off too early. We waited until the first full week of May - last Wednesday to be precise - to get it done. Hard to believe we were able to drive the Miata with the top down to fetch the CRV.
So. There you have it. We ARE to blame. Sorry Durham.
If you're still with me, thanks for putting up with this little meander. Some of you who have had a conversation with me will recognize my usually fairly random collection of thoughts. Or, it could be the self-isolation. Or the snow. Or...
Actually we at the farmette - fur balls and humans - are doing fairly fine, considering. Hope you are too. Until next week. Gratuitous kitten picture of Fred, who's not really upset about anything particularly.
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