Snowy November morning at home – the trees branches were loaded – Nikon D300, handheld, f5.6, 1/100, ISO 400, +0.7 EV, Nikkor 18-200mm at 35mm, natural light
Since sometime in October I have been seeing posts about snow in my Facebook memories. I usually mark the first snowfall of the year by posting something on Facebook about it or I remark about how much snow fell on a certain date.
This year all I have been able to say is that snow has fallen on the mountains. Down here in the valley the snow has been MIA. Missing in action.
The photo I am sharing this morning is from eleven years ago today. From the photos I took at home it looks like 10 to 12 inches of snow was on the ground when I woke up. The tree branches were heavy with snow. I didn’t get out into the field that morning because I knew that the roads were going to be treacherous due to the amount of snow on the ground.
We need the snow here, especially in the mountains where snow melt in the spring fills our reservoirs, recharges the aquifers, and provides us with drinking water.
Yes, I miss the snow. Last winter I only had to scrape snow off of my Jeep twice. When I first moved here in 2009 I had to scrape snow several times a week all winter long. Each year the number of times I have had to scrape snow off of my Jeep has gone down.
We didn’t get enough snow last year to refill those reservoirs in the mountains. Throughout the spring and summer I watched shrubs and trees produce little to no fruits and berries due to our extreme to exceptional drought. Grass growth was stunted. Trees started dying. Creeks dried up. Reservoirs were at extremely low levels.
The long range forecast does have some snow in it this morning for December 5th. Last year most of the time when there would be snow in the forecast the storms blew past us and usually all we got was few flurries.
We really, truly need snow. We were in trouble last year because we didn’t get enough of it during the winter of 2020-2021. We will be in much deeper and more desperate trouble if we don’t get enough snow this winter.
Mia
Like Marty I really, really hope you get the snow you need.
We, for a change, have had enough rain, However as summer looms if we reach our normal temperatures (or worse climb higher) tinderbox conditions will prevail again.
I truly hope you get some snow this year. I hope the same for us in CA. We have Santa Ana conditions again this week with high winds, very low humidity, and temps in the 80s and 90s which means fire season continues.