Winter Dreams

We are officially snowed in!! And it's not even Winter yet (officially).

Around 1:30, we took Oscar for a walk to the mailbox. Oscar usually loves the snow, but this was too much for him. After a few well-intentioned leaps around in the deep stuff, we had to take him into the car ruts so he could walk.

When we got to the mailbox, he sat down. I couldn't believe it.

I convinced Billy that we should let him off the leash because he couldn't get very far. He took off running, back along the car ruts, until he got to the turn-off for our house. He ran under the neighbor's minivan and we had to pull him out.

As soon as he got back on the porch, he shook like crazy.

Billy was taking hourly observations on our patio table. The final total was just over 18 inches, but some areas got more than two feet!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

I took some photos on Sunday morning after the snow had stopped. This is the most snow Maryland has had since 2003, and it's definitely the biggest storm I've seen here.

Oscar supervising.

I'm not going anywhere any time soon!

Billy did a good job forecasting for the storm. He started mentioning that we might get snow on Monday or Tuesday, and by Thursday morning he told me we would definitely get a good accumulation. This meant we got to the store to stock up on food on Thursday evening, before there were any crowds. He predicted 18" to 26" for the Baltimore and Washington areas, and that turned out to cover the various snowfall totals around the area. Below is the forecast map he posted online before the storm.

It doesn't look like it's going to melt any time soon, so I might be in for my first White Christmas!

("Winter Dreams" is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It's The Great Gatsby's chronological and thematic pre-cursor. I once ran out of time in my school year to teach The Great Gatsby, so we spent a week on "Winter Dreams" and discussed almost all the same issues. Thereafter, several students decided to read Gatsby voluntarily, which is probably the same number who would have actually read the whole thing if I had assigned it in the first place.)