Confetti

Strange weather, a strange day. Wind chimes ringing in the frigid air, a covering of dark clouds interrupted by drifts of clear sky. Sudden bursts of wind blowing fragments of fluffy white, confetti cut from a box of tissues or shaved from a block of ice, blotting out the sky, as in the final scene [...]

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First Snow, 2011/12

This may prove to be a snowy year. I was told that 3 weeks ago the mountain resort area to the east got 9 inches (23 cm). We didn’t get that snow here in Clarksburg — it’s not yet Halloween and there are still leaves on the trees. But today we are having our first [...]

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Spring Must be Near

Daffodil leaves poke through the snow, just four days ago. Now the snow that was on the ground is long gone, driven off by several days of rain, leaving the yard a marsh while rivers and creeks reach beyond their banks in places. Today there is still snow in the air, nearly indistinguishable from rain, [...]

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A bit of glow

It was another January thaw, the third this year, or maybe it was the fourth. What snow was left from previous days sat in dirty piles of slush in places the sun didn’t shine. Then the rain came. As temperatures slowly dropped the rain became freezing rain, then rain mixed with snow — what the [...]

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Snow returns to Clarksburg

And it ain’t a fit night out for man nor beast. – W.C. Fields, The fatal glass of beer

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Christmas Day

But here a small boy says: “It snowed last year, too. I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea.” “But that was not the same snow,” I say. “Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it [...]

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Conspiracy?

EarthSky’s meteor shower guide for 2010 claims that this year’s Geminid shower will be a particularly good show. It is taking place now, they say, but the best viewing in the Clarksburg area will be on the night of 13-14 December, especially just after midnight. The National Weather Service’s forecast for Clarksburg, West Virginia, calls [...]

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First Snow

December has reached Clarksburg, and with it the first snow of the season. Can Christmas be far behind?

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Imagine My Surprise

The Patching Parade had come and gone and the snow walls along our sidewalk, which provided slight protection for our yard from the street, had shrunk to near nothing, leaving an unpleasant grim remnant of gravel, ash, and salty water in their place. The trees throughout the yard had lost their white jackets, and even [...]

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Buddha and the Birds

This house has a patio, a stone-paved area edged with an iron railing, and raised on stone walls one story above the ground to make it level with the house’s first floor. Windows on the west wall of the dining room overlook the patio, making a pleasant view from the dining table, and a French [...]

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