The snow was late, as snow often is in the mid-Atlantic. When it shows up at all. Let’s just say we’re accustomed to disappointment, to sprinkles instead of flurries, to sleet that “holds down the total.”

Snowmaggedon and Snowpocalypse, those were aberrations. A dusting on the grass, that’s our fate.

So when I woke this morning to dry pavement, I didn’t think much of it. Another false alarm. 

Twenty minutes later it began. Not flurries, nothing tentative about it.

Snow falling as straight as rain.