April showers...snow showers that is...

It's snowing!!!!!

Yes, that's right. Snow.

Every now and again New England is blessed (cursed?) with a spring snow shower. Right now the snow is starting to be visible on the ground and cover the grassy areas but is melting on contact with road surfaces. For now. The weather people claim that metro north of Boston will receive 2-4 inches of the white stuff.

As I read over and spell check this post, the snowflakes are getting bigger and heavier and the snow has started to cover the road in front of the house. (fun, fun, fun.........NOT!)

Fortunately, April snows don't usually last too long around here.

Case in point, 1997: Easter Sunday was March 31 - a beautiful springlike day with temps in the mid to high 50's and a crisp crystal blue sky. The very next day, April 1, we got dumped on with 25" of snow. I'll never forget this because as I was shoveling the driveway by myself (ex was due to give birth to our first child in mid-May, obviously in no condition to participate in the fun) grumbling all the while because we didn't have a snow blower yet and our driveway was quite long and bumpy. The snow was the wet, heavy kind too. Great for snowmen and snowballs but inconvenient and useless for everything else. Since when is snow convenient in my book? (Never)

After exerting all of that effort and energy shoveling, ye olde weather gods decided to zoom back into spring over the course of the following week. By the very next Saturday (April 6) all of the snow had melted away to the degree that you would not even have realized that there was any trace of a snowstorm just five days earlier, let alone such a major dumping, unless you had witnessed it for yourself.

Ask anyone who has lived in the Boston/ southern New Hampshire area in the last 15 years about spring snows and I'll guarantee you they'll have their own memories and stories about the April Fool's Day Blizzard of '97.

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My friend and her daughter who live in Oregon will be leaving tomorrow for Louisiana. They'll be gone over the weekend and are scheduled to arrive back home sometime next Tuesday. Why Louisiana? Well, her ex-husband, and the father of their daughter, relocated there sometime after their divorce was finalized. So this provides an infrequent opportunity for the little girl to spend some time with her father.

I just hope the trip is a pleasant experience for them and that they will enjoy safe travel both ways. I hope that the little girl enjoys the visit with her dad, however brief it might be.