Wintery Mix

When I was a kid, this was one of my favorite jokes.

Man on phone:  Is this the weatherman?
Weatherman:  Yes, it is.
Irate Man: I just wanted you to know that I just shoveled two feet of partly cloudy off my porch!

I've always been interested in weather prediction.  Ever since the Kalamazoo TV station hired a meteorologist instead of a weatherman, I've been captivated by those big patterns on the map, and the ways that the Hs and Ls and curved bumpy lines could pretty well tell you what was going to happen tomorrow and the next day.  And now, after forty years of Al Roker and The Weather Channel and wunderground.com, we've all become some moderate connoisseurs of tropical lows and the jet stream.

And like any map, weather maps can be pretty, too.

So, as I was getting ready to do the weekly road trip from home to not home, I looked (as I always do) at Weather Underground and listened to NPR.  They both called for some combination of rain, snow, and ice pellets.  The Vermont Public Radio forecaster specifically called for "a wintery mix," another one of those terms I never heard of even though I grew up in a wintery place.

Well, to paraphrase a certain grade school joke, I just drove through 188 miles of wintery mix.  The various forms of computerized traction control in Habanero were all employed at some moment or another, from driving up Spruce Knob Road to retrieve the mousetrap I'd left this morning (long story...) to the long climb past the ski resorts at Killington to the very-not-plowed I-89 across New Hampshire.  Periodically, someone would pass me, expressing a desire to maintain the posted speed limit, but for the most part, my compatriots and I were all content to travel at 43 miles per hour on the Interstate and considerably less through the back woods of eastern Vermont.

I have a standard set of stops along my way, based on my periodic need to take on or leave behind some tea.  I stop at the Maplefield's Market in Woodstock VT; at Simon's Mobil in Enfield NH; and at the New Hampshire Rest Stop/State Liquor Store near Hooksett NH.  The guy at the Dunkin Donuts at Simon's Mobil now automatically gets me a large iced tea, black no lemon, while I'm using the rest room; I guess that makes me a regular.  The woman who runs the gas station store counter was mopping slush off the floor while wearing a Santa hat with "Bah Humbug!" in green glitter across the white fur band.

This marks the first driving snow of the year.  Which also means the first time walking around the car and kicking all the mudguards to knock the slush out of the wheelwells, the first time using the rear window defroster, the first time getting the snow brush out of the trunk.  Seasonal rituals.

We've started to learn the early parts of the winter rituals in the house, too.  How to bank the fire so we can light it quickly the next morning; how much wood to bring in from the garage; where the cats will sit to warm themselves.  We'll soon figure out when to call our friend to plow the drive; where to shovel and where to use the snowblower; which windows get packed in with snow and which are blown clear by the wind.

The house makes a little more noise in cold weather — not merely because the furnace and the pellet stove auger and the water heater run more often, but because the wood frame shrinks a little when there's no moisture in the air, and everything creaks just a bit.  Of course, I make a little more noise in the winter too, so I shouldn't be too surprised.