Riddle Me This

Because you haven't seen pictures like from everyone else who lives near us, I'll just be one of the crowd. That craptacular photography is brought to you courtesy of 7AM and no coffee. But you at least get a feel for what went on here. From what I understand, our tiny little town made national news headlines. Go, us. A freak snowstorm on April 23, because I've always said that we live in a vortex of perpetual winter.

Proof. Right there.

Three days before that snow, we were sweating in shorts at 80 degrees. I chose to go to Lowe's to look at gardening supplies instead of actually gardening, because egads - 80 degrees on April 20th. The peak of our summers here reach 80-something, and a thick blooded Yankee needs time to acclimate to that kind of stuff. Sheesh.

But the snow was pretty, no? Was in the past tense, because it's all gone now. If you look real hard in the shaded places on the western side of large things, you could scrape enough together to make a snowball. It was 60 degrees today and just gorgeous. Again. Spring has been very bipolar this year.

But I learned a few things in that 2-day snow storm. I learned that, while I don't ever get excited about spring snow (even half a foot of it) because it melts as quickly as it comes, I also don't like it. It has been such an incredibly warm spring that the grass has been mown a few times, plants are growing that normally don't make a showing until mid-May sometime, and everything is a nice bright summer green, not the pastel kind of spring green that's still trying to decide if it's going to make a go if it this year or not. And that pretty green and all those plants were covered in snow. It was depressing. And then when the snow melted, my brain couldn't comprehend what my eyes were seeing. For all of my 41 years, my brain knows that when snow melts, the grass underneath is brownish and dull. This time, the melting snow showed off that gorgeous summer green. My brain was all, "huh?" even though I kept telling it, "of course, stupid. You knew that color was underneath it all the time." But all I got in response to my logic was, "huh?" I don't like having a confused brain, therefore I don't like late spring snow.

And the weirdest thing ever happened. Perhaps one can explain it. The cars are sporting a film of dirt. And not just ours, but all the cars driving around town. And when I say "a film" I mean the entire car is covered. Roof, windows, doors, side panels, everything. Covered. My first thought was, "you can tell which cars were in need of a washing before the snow hit," but then that just doesn't make sense. That doesn't happen over winter when cars are in need of  a washing and we get snow. Was the pretty, white snow dirty? What gives? I know there's  perfectly logical explanation and I'll feel like an idiot when I hear it, so go ahead. Be the one that tells me the secret. I need to know!