You won’t find “Snowcopolyse” in a dictionary, but after last Sunday’s blizzard nobody has to define what the term means. That was some serious winter weather that hit here.
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Nobody wants a repeat of the high winds and snow last Sunday but everybody seems to be venturing a guess on how many snowfalls we should expect in the months ahead, as if we’re in control of such things.
There’s lots of folklore to base opinions upon.
First off, let’s define a snowfall as tracking snow, meaning the snow is deep enough to see your tracks. One popular way to predict the winter is to note the date of the month when the first tracking snow occurs. But don’t believe it. We had a tracking snow here before Halloween, but surely we won’t have endure 20-something snowfalls before springtime, will we?
That first snowfall fell on unfrozen ground here. Some say that’s a sign for the winter to be mild.
I put high value on woolly worms and I recall driving a delivery route late in the fall where the blacktop was simply covered with them. Thick, black woolly worms or the thickness of farm animals’ fur are two signs that are as good to go by as anything. But such observations don’t actually predict a snowfall count.
The Farmers Almanac offers this tidbit: As many days old as is the moon on the first snow, there will be that many snowfalls by crop planting time. Others listen for thunder, the thought being if there is thunder in winter, then it will snow seven days later.
Have you heard about snow calling snow? Some say that the longer a snow lays on the ground, the longer it is calling for more snow to come again.
Worrywarts take focus long before winter actually arrives. There’s folklore claiming if ant hills are high in July, winter will be snowy … or if the first week in August is unusually warm, the coming winter will be snowy and long. What you hear, of course, depends on where you live.
A comment posted online from a mother in Boston repeated this lore: “When it snows like sand, it will cover the land; if it’s big as a feather, it won’t last forever.”
My grandpa was a believer when observing a halo ’round the moon. That was to predict either a rain or snow to come soon, but I recalled him only paying attention during a mid-summer drought.
Our dog, Josie, keeps an eye on the squirrels that frequent our backyard. It is said that squirrels gathering nuts in a flurry will cause snow to gather in a hurry. I usually think of Josie as my good for nothing “potlicker” but if she keeps the squirrels on the scurry to help us avoid flurries, I may have to change my opinion.
Come to think of it, perhaps dogs really do offer the most reliable insight on the weather. If you see dog tracks in the snow on the ground, it snowed. If the ground is wet you can bet it either rained …or that darn neighbor’s dog has been over into our yard again.
I can’t argue that one. How ’bout you?