Sometimes I think we know too much about the weather, about European and North American Mesoscale (NAM) models, about high pressures and cold air damming. After all, we’re not meteorologists; at best our knowledge is a touching glance.

But then I learn just enough to gain a vision.

Take yesterday’s “mixed precipitation” event, which produced coated boughs and slick sidewalks. I’d heard that due to low dew points, it would be snowing up in the atmosphere before it touched earth. In my highly unscientific understanding of this I imagine the air cooling, filling with moisture, to give passage to the first flakes, to pave the way.

It’s an amateur’s view of the universe: phantom snow falling on fluffy clouds, a shower of white that no one can see. A poetic description that cannot possibly be true, but I like to think of it that way.