it seems early for snow that sticks

There are still some snowflakes falling as I write this blog, but the majority of it is already on the ground. This is the 2nd snow storm this week, but the forecast is clear for next week, so maybe the streets can be cleared before I start driving again.

I think maybe we got just under 30cm/12in in total. We usually get less than that for all of November, so we made the Top 20 Records this month in Minneapolis.  My main complaint, though, about getting so much snow so early is the danger that it will linger on the ground until March.  It's basically half a year of staring at whiteness. 

Unfortunately, it got cold enough earlier this month that this current snowfall may indeed fail to melt.  Here's a photo from a hike I took 2 weeks ago with Outwoods at Lone Lake Park.  It was a wet year, and the water table rose to cover the usual trail.  The water also surrounded the bench that was meant as a place to sit and look at the lake.

It was all frozen in November.  We walked out on the ice near the hill, but it started making creaking sounds, so we beelined to solid ground right away.  But the ice still stands there.

It seems like there's not much chance that this snowfall will melt.  Until March of next year.  All that snow, regardless of what you thought of it when it fell months ago, it all becomes kipip ("depressing snow") eventually.

I think of piblokto as a particular form of prairie madness, being stuck indoors staring at the same 4 walls for half a year at a time.  There's probably a lot of material for study on the space station (and Antarctic research stations) too.  If it was up to me, agencies around the world would pick astronauts only from people who had survived years in near-polar latitudes.  It's a good psychological stress test.

Anyway.  There's a lot of snow on the ground on 2019 December 01.  I'm already thinking about planting seeds for sprouts for next season's garden.