The other morning, I was awakened early by the sound of snow sliding off the metal roof and smacking the deck below. When I got up and looked out at 7 inches of fresh white snow, with more coming sideways in a full-on blizzard, I was overwhelmed with wonder and awe at the beauty of it all.
Well, maybe wonder and awe isn’t quite right. I was definitely overwhelmed, but it wasn’t exactly wonder and awe. I think the emotion could more accurately be described as crushing despair. I mean, tomorrow is the freakin’ first of May and I’ve yet to see a bare spot in my yard. The temperatures have been as low as 10 degrees some nights, and for all practical purposes, it might as well be February except the ski lifts have closed. And on those rare afternoons when it actually breaks freezing, the road into the house turns to gumbo.
For one brief moment, I considered hanging myself, but that would have required a trip out to the barn to get a rope, and there was no way I was putting my winter boots on to trudge out there in Dr. Zhivago’s blizzard. It was snowing so hard I might have got lost on the way. Besides, I would have had to shovel the drift away from the door to get into the barn. I’m done shoveling snow for the year. So I pulled the shades and pretended it wasn’t happening.
These are the days whiskey was made for. If hard liquor had not been invented already, it would have been simultaneously cooked up in houses throughout Summit County. Even among the most abstemiously devout Mormons, there is an emergency supply carefully stashed in the basement for times like this. It’s not well publicized, but there is an exemption to the prohibition on alcohol in the scriptures. Buried down there in the footnotes it says that if it snows every damn day in April, after you haven’t seen a shadow since October, God doesn’t mind at all if you just get plastered until it’s finally over.
There are signs of spring. The redwing blackbirds came back on schedule. The sandhill cranes are back in the pasture right on cue. What I haven’t seen yet this spring is a potgut squirrel. They are normally out of their hibernation and running amok on April 15. I think I might have heard a couple, but I haven’t seen them. They are hunkering down until it finally melts.
And while I keep trying to console myself that it really has to end soon, that spring will come, and summer isn’t far behind, I remember that last year, the biggest storm of the entire year dropped 16 inches of snow in my driveway on May 24. But at least there had been a melt-off, and there was green grass underneath it. Then it instantly got hot, and in about 48 hours, the entire winter’s snowpack melted off at once. There really wasn’t a lot of snow last winter, but when it all melted on a single day, the flood damage was terrible.
This year, there has been no significant melt up high. The snowpack is still accumulating, and is about 180 percent of normal in some of the local drainages. So if May actually produces warmer temperatures, we’re in for a good bit of trouble in the flooding department. As much as I’m longing for warm weather, I’m also hoping it doesn’t come too abruptly.
I was in town the other day, and was with a group of friends that included one guy who was new to the area. He asked when we thought it was reasonable to take the snow tires off the car. Nobody even understood the question. Take the snow tires off the car? Tire chains maybe, but snow tires? Why would you ever do that?
Last fall, based on a folkloric method of predicting the severity of a winter by the location of hornet nests, I came to the conclusion that this one was going to be a winter to remember. The few nests around were all in the very tops of the trees. That’s supposed to predict a cold winter with lots of snow. The hornets got that one right. I’ve been searching for a similar prediction of the coming summer. If the potguts don’t come out of hibernation until May, does that predict a cool, wet summer? I don’t know. So far, I haven’t found an indicator there, and the old guy who told me about the hornet nests is long gone.
But it probably isn’t a good sign that there are penguins nesting in the backyard.
Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column for nearly 25 years.