What snow we'd had was pretty much gone. All that I saw left were shady spots along Campbell Creek. But it's a bright new world today. I say that because having snow on the ground makes everything brighter including night.
Finding stats on first snows, and more importantly first lasting snows, isn't as easy as I expected. I did find one site with charts of average first snow for around the country. Here's the West table down to Anchorage.
| Avg 1st Snow | Earliest Snow | Avg Annual Snow | |
| Fairbanks | Sep. 27 | Aug. 29, 1922 | 64.2 inches |
| Great Falls | Oct. 2 | Aug. 22, 1992 | 61.6 inches |
| Cheyenne | Oct. 2 | Sep. 8, 1929 | 60 inches |
| Crested Butte | Oct. 5 | Sep. 3, 1961 | 206.7 inches |
| Billings | Oct. 12 | Sep. 7, 1962 | 55.6 inches |
| Anchorage | Oct. 15 | Sep. 20, 1947 | 74.6 inches |
Our first snow this year was October 21. Not too late. But there's another statistic that I'm looking for: first sticking snow. By that I mean, snow that doesn't disappear in a couple of days, but sticks around all winter. Our first snow this year was followed by wind and high 40s temperatures.
November 5 seems to be late for sticking, or permanent snow. It has been cooler this last week, so maybe this will stick. Our backyard thermometer says 33˚F, just above freezing.
We have yet to have snow in Ottawa -- but it is surprising how often your neck of the woods' weather is like ours.
ReplyDeleteHad some fat, white, slow rain two days ago, but...only for a few minutes. We have yet to have snow that "lays" as the old-timers used to say. With CChange, we could have a green Christmas -- does happen. Disappoints everybody -- one of those years we came out of a party at midnight on Christmas Eve to find huge flakes gently falling and filling up the streets. It tickled our upturned faces. It was a Christmas miracle.
I live in NY state 20 miles south of the Canadian border and we have not had a frost yet!
ReplyDeleteStill have peppers on the plants and geraniums blooming!
We've had sunny days since the snow, but it's colder at night so there's some ice where it thaws a bit in the day then freezes. But these are beautiful days with great clean air.
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