Nor'easter

What a Nor'easter looks like on colorized radar. Blue is snow and as you can see the storm's epicenter is right over our house.

As seen from the deck.

And then the sun came out. You can almost hear the Hallelujah Chorus playing in the background.

I'd like to take this opportunity to educate the readers on a quaint weather phenomenon up here in the North Country, "The Nor'easter". Despite what the name Nor'easter might lead you to believe, this phenomenon has nothing to do with the holidays as in, "I won't be home for New Years, Nor'Easter". No, this phenomenon is primarily a matter of snow and lots of it. The name 'Nor'easter' is a New England colloquialism that loosely translates to "S**t, not more snow!" (In reality the name is derived from the direction the wind blows during one of these legendary storms.) Now, despite the fact that Nor'easters bring plenty of snow which blows in from, you guessed it, the Northeast, we have our friends down South to thank for this particular brand of miserable weather. That's because a Nor'easter results when a depression forms in the deep South, picks up lots of moisture from the Gulf and then makes its way up the Atlantic coast before slamming into the cold air that hangs out up here in the North Country for most of the Winter. At some point the storm will come to rest right over our house where it will proceed to dump a whole lot of frozen moisture. Given their geographic origins, maybe we shouldn't call these things "Nor'easters", but Stonewall Jackson's revenge. In any case, we have been enduring our first Nor'easter of the season over the last 24 hours and it hasn't disappointed, dropping about 9" of wet snow and freezing rain. The only thing that would have made this any better would have been a long power outage. Guess we'll have to save that for later in the season.