Quirks of Snow

Montana being Montana, you should expect snow during any given month of the year.  You should also expect some old rancher to call your new pickup “a nice outfit” and, if you’re lucky, the old rancher might invite you try to catch trout in his “crick.”   But I will save our quirks of language for another blog.  This blog is about quirks of snow.

Before I move on to my main point, I have another snow story.  In July of 1985, I and my friend Kevin St Clair, shared a few drinks with two elderly brothers from Sweden at a hotel bar in Beijing, China.  At some point, one of the Swedish gentlemen proclaimed this: “We have two vinters in Sveden, a green one and a vite one!”   

Back here in Montana, we are in the spring of the year—something other folks might refer to as “late winter.”  I rather like to think of this time of year as the season of wet snow (as opposed to the much colder season of dry snow extending from December through February).

Knowing my place in the seasons, I was not particularly surprised when I looked outside yesterday at midday and saw huge flakes of snow jostling about in the air.   The nature of the snowfall at the back of my house was noteworthy, however.  Big flakes streamed straight toward my house from the north, propelled by a rather gentle wind.  But the falling snow turned weird upon reaching my deck.  Instead of falling down, the flakes fell up, shooting skyward again.

My house totally rejected the snow.

Good boy, house!    

—Mitchell Hegman