Fall Foilage Pics

[idigjars]

Great pics by everybody. Thanks for sharing them with us. I love fall weather and color but I am not looking forward to winter coming :-). Take care and safe carving to all. Paul

[AlArchie]

Seems like everyone loves the fall colors, and those are some awesome photos. But there were a couple comments about the lack of love for the pending winter.

I may have posted this a couple years back but thought this would be an opportune time to sort of defend our winter months. Hope you enjoy the "white season" as much as we do here in Big Snow Country.

Al

WINTER SNOW

I awoke the other morning and the radio was listing the school and business closings. That only meant one thing. I had to get dressed, haul the snowblower out of the shed and start working on the driveway, the sidewalks and the path to the bird feeder. Why do we live here in this snow belt of the midwest, anyway?


Oh, well, winter pants, socks, shirt, parka, Kromer, boots and choppers on, open the garage door and be greeted by a foot or more of drifted snow which needs to be shoveled before I can extricate the snowblower from the shed.


As the machine kicked up it's own storm, adding to natures, I started to feel the wind driven snow on my face and began to remember all the different types of snow we “suffer” through. This one, riding a 30 mph wind, stung, and blurred but did not obliterate vision. It actually felt refreshing on my cheeks.


Earlier this year we were blessed with a swirling curtain of tiny lake effect flakes that seemed to wander as shimmering draperies of ivory, sometimes totally obscuring the landscape and then allowing glimpses of whitened trees against a hazy horizon. After the lake effect settled and the wind died to calm there were those huge conglomerate snowflakes that floated to the ground so slowly I could almost count them.....the ones I made bets with myself on where each cluster would finally settle.


The real blizzards seem to wait for a strong south wind carrying moist air up from the Gulf of Mexico to collide with a stalled cold front that has pushed down across Lake Superior from the Arctic. When the two meet the snow is whipped into a fury that all but blocks visibility, and the best I can do is watch the vanilla frosting get sculpted into glorious waving drifts a few feet in front of my eyes.


Somewhere around Christmas, we always seem to get that inspiring snowfall that sets the tone for the season; medium sized flakes adrift on a clear windless air, sparkling in the evening twilight as if in a mystic globe.


Finally, when the temperature dips below zero, snow crystals sublimate and settle, lightly as frost, on exposed branches and open ground, glistening like thousands of diamonds in the full moon's light.




Now I remember one reason why we live here. It's the SNOW!