Nice Day for a White Wedding

I suppose you heard all about the snow that snarled Denver, CO (twice). What you didn't likely hear about is the same thing happened to Albuquerque.

The week before Christmas, they got some snow. It melted from the roads and sidewalks before I arrived, but it stayed cold enough to remain on the lawns and other planted areas. This itself is unusual for Albuquerque, and even more so for me, because we rarely got snow in South Jersey before January. For the first time in years, I had a white Christmas.

Snow was predicted again for the Friday after Christmas, so my mother decided we should take down our outside lights and refuel my car on Thursday morning. It turned out to be an excellent idea because the snow started falling that afternoon. I shoveled Friday morning -- then again Friday afternoon. By that time, over six inches had fallen. I shoveled again Saturday morning, and at least ten more inches had fallen by then. By the time it finally stopped snowing on Saturday afternoon (48 hours since it began), we had at least 18" of snow. (It’s kind of neat to take a yardstick outside to measure, and it just keeps going and going and going then finally touches the ground.)

We had snow here in Las Cruces yesterday. It started about 6 a.m. (I know because I was out for my morning constitutional) and ended at 12 noon. It stuck to the cars and some of the ground, but not to the streets and sidewalks. I phoned to ask if we had to go in to work, to clean up any place, but I was told not to worry because it would reach 50 degrees (Fahrenheit) in the afternoon. Wouldn’t you know it, it did? This is the type of snow I’m more accustomed to in NM: that which melts by morning’s end. It’s also how I can irritate people in other parts of the country (or even the state) when I say, "‘Snow’? What’s ‘snow’?"

In Las Cruces, I can reliably say that it snows once per winter, and most frequently during the break between fall and spring semesters. (Although there was that one year it didn’t snow at all -- so it snowed twice the following winter to make up for it.) In many cases, that snowfall is even during the week that staff is off, so I’m usually in Albuquerque and miss it completely. This year, I saw more snow that all my years in NM combined! We got it in spades (or should I say ‘shovels’?)