SNOW!!!

When I woke up this morning, there was approximately 3" of snow on the ground... as I write this, it has just stopped snowing for the third time... and I'm up to almost 5" accumulation!!! Woohoo! I LOVE snow. Always have, probably always will. My earliest memories of snow are mostly from Christmases at my grandparents' houses in PA, since coastal VA rarely gets a good blanketing. However, on the rare occasion that we did get snow at home, we definitely took advantage of it... I remember building quite a few snowmen in the yard with my sister, and sledding at Bunny Hill with a line of parents at the bottom catching kids who might fly too far and land in the river. Sledding in PA was an adventure as well... when my cousins and I flew down the hills of Dickinson Law School campus, there were sometimes less people on the sled or tube at the bottom than there were at the top. :)

And of course, 4.5 years at Penn State added plenty of wonderful snow memories. Freshman year, it snowed on Halloween, the earliest I had ever seen snow in my life. I remember dancing around outside with a friend from Georgia who was just as excited. Snow at Penn State brought so many fun things. There were snowball fights in BDUs with the AFROTC crowd, and band practices with no hope of seeing the yard lines on the field. Snowmen dotted the quads of every dorm area. I played snow football the first time it snowed almost two feet, and experienced the wonder of being tackled into a sea of white powder. There were several tailgates and football games in the snow, skiing and snow tubing at Mount Tussey... I could go on and on.

So yesterday was the beginning of my snow memories in England. We made a bet in our office a few weeks ago about when the first snow would be observed at Lakenheath, plus or minus one day. In technical terms, snow had to be encoded as the type of precipitation in the official RAF Lakenheath weather observation for it to count. Most people picked a day in January; I picked Christmas (for fun), and Greg picked December 18th. Go figure. Haha. Now we all owe him a Coke, but I'm not too disappointed because I am so excited to see the snow!

I was actually working the desk in the weather station when the snow started yesterday, and boy did things get crazy fast. Visibility dropped to 1/2 mile, winds gusted up to 35kts 3 hours before we were expecting them, the SOF was calling trying to recover jets that had taken off, the phone was ringing off the hook... lucky for me Greg was there to help out, because I didn't even have time to be excited about the snow starting. The first bit was over in about half an hour, and we didn't see the serious snow start until around 7pm, when I was happily back home with my car safely in the garage. I ran around and took some pictures, then went to bed just after 9pm expecting to wake up at 5am to a couple inches outside. Instead, I was woken up by my cell phone ringing at 10pm... delayed reporting in the morning, no flying, so no need to open the weather station, don't show up till 11am. Woohoo! Took a couple more pictures, looked at some weather stuff on the computer, and went back to sleep.

I woke up at 6:30am and was thrilled to see the 3" white blanket over everything outside. After it started getting lighter, I put on all my snow gear and went outside to take pictures. I also had to go to the post office, so that gave me a wonderful excuse to walk through town and see everything covered in snow. Here is a picture of my house from across the street, complete with the Christmas tree lit up in the front bay window:


When I got to town, I saw a lot of snow-covered cars and people trying with varying levels of success to uncover them, get them started, or move from their parking spaces. Made me extra thankful for my garage. Here is a pretty picture of the clock in my town square:

On the walk back to my house, my phone rang again, this time it was the squadron DO: don't come to work at all today, and pass the message to the rest of the weather flight. Yippee!!! So then I got to call a few other people with the good news. When I got back to my house, the sun had risen and the snow looked even prettier in the daylight. I set about making a snowman in the backyard, but had to compromise with a small one since the snow was really dry and powdery, not good for packing. Here is my little guy, I still think he is pretty cute:

So the rest of the morning and early afternoon has been spent enjoying the snow, taking pictures, watching two more inches fall from the sky, baking some yummy mesquite chicken for lunch, and beginning to put together my futon that was delivered (in a box) this week. Greg's going-away dinner is tonight, and I really hope that everyone still shows up for it... the roads should be much better after people have been driving on them all day. I'm going to see if I can finish the futon before I have to get ready and venture out. Wish me luck, and if you want to see all my England snow pictures, check them out here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=355523&id=701905001&l=9bf3067ae4