Wednesday, January 08, 2014

Snowball Fever


Here at high altitude in Shiga Prefecture, Japan, just over and up the snowcapped mountains from Kyoto - the old and sometimes snowy capital - even as three or more ice breakers are one by one being frozen into the Antarctic pack ice, the precipitation is falling steadily here on the mountainside today, as it has been since morning, the beautiful quieting whiteness delicately laying its soft, thick, ermine blanket over the countryside, festooning the trees and outlining the shapes of all the paddies in its... NOT! 

On January 8 it is NOT snowing, it is raining; it hasn't snowed yet this year, apart from a solo flake I think I saw one evening, which might have been a confused butterfly. But who ever said weather is fair? What’s worse, the pour is coming down as hard as if this were rainy season, which should have ended months ago; it’s even flooding in places, and if this were crisp dry snow it would be deep and way nicer, but noooo, it perverses to be wet, cold, rain and what can we say, we serial weather victims, what can we do about it and don’t give me that carbon footprint spiel if you don’t mind, it makes me want to throw a heavy snowball really hard, which those boat crews are probably doing a lot of in the Antarctic right now.   


4 comments:

Tabor said...

Don't forget how hot and dry poor Australia is right now.

Deb said...

It's been raining here too, but at -35 rain freezes and turns white and builds up on the ground at an alarming rate. We now drive through canyons of snow pushed up along the streets and into every front garden. If you like I'll get right to work shipping some of these mountains of snow to you, so you can feel happier. Just lemme know. I've also made that offer to Australia, but they have closer sources than western Canada.

Robert Brady said...

Tabor, a lot of other countries want our rain, and I'm doing my best to get that organized; Deb, I'll let you know when to start your snow shipments as soon as the rain stops...

Sandy Miller said...

We just experienced a "Polar Vortex", -42! Global warming?