Argh, it is still snowing!

As most readers of this blog know (and if you don’t you’ll soon find out) I live about 15 miles south of Washington D.C.  Now under usual circumstances this means I get cold, dry winters and long, almost unbearably hot summers.  I live in a small cul-de-sac surrounded by woodland, and am used to seeing almost as many helicopters making the trip between Qantico and The Pentagon as birds on the bird feeders.  What I am not used to is large snowfalls!

Now don’t get me wrong, I love snow and in my first few years here I revelled in the fact that this area was “well prepared” and would laugh at a mere 2-4inches of the white stuff that would have thrown England into gridlock and panic.  However, this winter all that has changed, and we’ve had two major storms that have dropped over 46inches of snow so far this winter.  46inches of snow is a lot of snow, and to make matters worse tonight it is snowing AGAIN!  We’ve just about shoveled out the 21-23inches that fell over the weekend, and now another 8-14inches is falling.  It has reached the stage now where I see the prediction of 8-14inches and think “Phew, that won’t be too much to shovel!”

One of the positive things with all this snowfall has been seeing how my small neighbourhood copes with the bad weather.  As the storm blew in on Friday night a tree fell, almost hitting several cars and completely blocking the road.  The fact that it was 11pm and the middle of a blizzard did not stop 5-6 volunteers joining me with chainsaws and shovels to clear the road, and dig out the pavements in the wee small hours.  We eventually retired well past 1am, only to get up and do it all again on Saturday.  Sunday saw all of my immediate neighbours outside shoveling, clowning around, and helping each other dig out cars and pathways.  During normal weather we all work busy lives in a variety of offices and government jobs across the metro area, and we might not see folks to talk to from one month to the next but give us a situation like this and everybody mucks in together and we keep things moving.

I was going to embed some photographs of the snow in this post, but realised I’d taken too many, so instead I’ll just insert this one.  If you want to see more click the picture and it will take you to my Snowpocalypse II photo set on Flickr.

Getting out in the snow

Click the image above to see the full set on Flickr

I decided to take the camera for a tramp in the snow at around 8am this morning, so togged myself up in my multiple layers and went out to brave the snow and ice.  You can click the photograph above to be taken to Flickr to see the complete set of photographs from the blizzard of 2009.

The final tally for snowfall was 20 inches! (figures from the National Weather Service)

Thunderstorming

I love a good thunderstorm and remember many an afternoon as a lad standing with my dad and brother in the greenhouse watching the lightening play across the Studley skyline.  Eventually we decided standing in a glass and metal box surrounded by trees wasn’t the smartest move and so watched from the doorways instead, but the excitement never wained.

Virginia has some very impressive thunderstorms, with the combination of hot and humid from the south and cool air blowing from the great lakes down over the Appalachian mountains making ideal conditions for impressive summer storms.

Today was one of those days and with the forecasters predicting a large slow moving storm I ran from my last meeting of the day and raced for home.  My intention was to get the car parked and covered, and the cat snuggled, before the first raindrop fell.  Unfortunately Mother Nature knows a trick or two and the storm blew in with impressive speed.  As I pulled on to the Fairfax County Parkway the sky looked ominously like this:

As I journeyed home the lightening crashed around me and very soon the heavy raindrops were bouncing off my fiberglass.  Thankfully I didn’t see any of the penny sized hail being talked about in D.C.  I got home and the rain was abating, the storm pressing on east, and my plan in tatters… still managed to snuggle with the kitten though.

Later in the evening I looked out the window and the sky was a shocking shade of pink, with the humidity making everything shimmer.  Pretty amazing stuff…

This is why I get allergies

This is how my car looked when I walked out to it this morning.  The whole thing is yellow!

The whole car is dappled yellow as spring takes off in Virginia and the tree pollen hits full force!

A moment in time

Following on from my last post, which was written in a stream of conciousness as I sat surfing the web on this evening in April 2009, I found myself restless in bed and got up to write poetry.  Don’t judge me on that statement, it is just sometimes I find the words, my mind, and paper coincide, and most of the time they do not.

As I wrote on a random page of an old notebook I didn’t think about what I was writing, I just let my words hit the page in a most cathartic manner.  Then as I went to retire and try again to find sleep I discovered I’d written in this journal before, many years ago when I’d first came to the United States.  I repeat these words from August 11th 2003 here in ful:

The transition to life in the U.S. seems like a parachute jump.

Initially everything was a blur of detail, forms and faces, in racing freefall towards the ground, a solid visible end.  Even into early August I was still in freefall.  Now the days are still rushing by, but I feel I’m in the nano-seconds after pulling the ripcord.  I feel that in the next instant, the next three seconds I’ll discover if my ‘chute will open and I’ll float down safely to earth, or if I’ll be scrabbling for my reserve as the plummit continues…

My notes reveal I was listening to Peter Gabriel’s More Than This as I wrote those words, this song and another from the album “UP” managed to keep me in touch with reality as I went through a fairly difficult transition.  I’ll blog later on my interpretation of this song, but for now I’ll decide it is to suffice to say that there is far more than religious imagery within the lyrics.

Even now many years on I know those nano-seconds seemed so long, and that although that particular ‘chute opened, life itself is a continuation of this exciting and dramatic adventure.  I also realise I was struggling with fairly deep depression at that time, and those demons are now contained and I’m much happier now.  Still hooked on BASE jumping clips on YouTube too!

with every day another bit falls away…