I woke this morning to the patter of rain upon the roof.
The forecast for last night had called for rain. Torrential rains. Flash flood warnings.
A far cry from the weekend, indeed.
Five inches of snow fell on Saturday. Some melted away on Sunday — though the temperature barely climbed above freezing all day, the sun was out strong and the sky was clear and cloudless and blue.
Monday morning, I found that the snow had been largely a localized affair. I had three inches still on the ground at home, in the city there was was nothing on the ground at all. Even at the office, to the north of the city, there was but a fringe of snow, barely worth noting.
The rains in the forecast would wash what remained of the snow away.
To my surprise, it was not rain but snow that was falling before bed.
I had gone to Food Lion; though it was nearly ten, I needed scrapple, a dozen eggs, and a loaf of Italian bread. A light snow began to fall as I drove to the grocery store. When I reached the store, the snowfall was not insignificant.
Had I ever seen snowflakes so large? These were no ordinary snowflakes; they were immense, half an inch or more in diameter. I looked up into the sky. The halogen light, far above the parking lot, backlighting the falling snow and giving off a glow far beyond the norm, gave the impression that the snow came from nowhere a mere fifteen feet above me, as if by magic. In the parking lot, I put out my arms and twirled around, letting the snowflakes fall against my dark woolen coat and trying to catch the enormous snowflakes on my tongue.
Snowfall makes children of us all.
The snow, of course, did not last. At some point in the night, somewhen after I had gone to bed, the snow changed over to rain. Life tells me it is always the other way round — rain changing over to snow — yet, this once, it was snow to rain in the cold and dark of night.
I woke at five, as I have the past week or more, unbidden by the alarm. Rain fell against the roof, and I lay in the bed, the covers pulled up, and stared at the sloping ceiling. In time the alarm went off, and later still the sun rose. I looked out the bedroom window; the roof above the kitchen outside the window, which was still covered in snow when I had gone to bed, was now clear.
Rain had washed it all away.