Mack Williams: The Big Snow (so far) of December, 2018

Published 12:00 am Sunday, December 16, 2018

Mack Williams

Throughout the day, conversations began with snow or turned to it. It seemed that each time I checked Weather.com the predicted accumulation was already increasing “somewhere up above!”
Through the thickening cloud cover, the sun’s visage gave the appearance of an overly-bright, cyclopic “sun dog” (cyclopic, because there are usually two “sun dogs”).
But I went to bed with some “Scrooge-like” doubts in my mind, for in previous years I had sometimes seen “hoopla’s” predictive, excited “hot-aired” wind remain only “hot-air” on a cold, dry day. I retired, figuring to awaken to silent snow, although I’ve heard “snow thunder” on rare occasions.
I was awakened around 4:30 a.m., not by frozen, falling, flaky liquid, but by a much warmer liquid demanding exit (such is the case with old men and “plumbing”).
When I looked out my glass doors, I was amazed! Of course, during my 67 years, I’ve seen many snowfalls, in fact, “bigguns,” (deer hunter terminology). But this one was surprisingly intense. Such quiet intensity could have been described by imaginary “accented musical rests.” The wind sped up the snow into a very fast “allegro” (to the beat of a mute metronome).
I did imagine that ears much more more astute than those of a dog would have revealed each falling flake to sound like radio static, or like the sound of a scratch on an old vinyl 78.
The nature of my outside light gave the snowflakes a sepia color, like that of some of the old black-and-white “snow shots” made by my brother Joe and me back on the Old Concord Road in the 1950s and early 60s.
My outside light was lighting up the contrast between falling snow and darkness. In daytime, the scene would have been one of a single-color “whiteout!”
The wind made the snow seem to race to the ground, each flake with the same “single-minded” determination (there you go, “snow anthropomorphism”). It reminded me of an old vaudeville “scenery wheel” having fallen over and still spinning, its scenery now running into the ground. Also, it was somewhat reminiscent of that runaway merry-go-round in Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train” (1951).
The snow was falling so fast that it prevented the revival of my old Old-Concord-Road-habit of spying out single flakes and following them down. To have repeatedly attempted to do so with these rapidly-moving flakes would have given me the neck version of carpal tunnel.
The flaky “particles” were definitely sped up, but still far from being accelerated to the point of giving birth to additions to the Periodic Table. I did give pause for thought (but not worry, of course), about all of that kinetic energy suddenly becoming static again.
One time, the wind changed direction and blew the snow in the direction of my glass doors, almost making it seem like my apartment had suddenly become mobile and “taken off” down the road into the direction of the oncoming snow, my glass doors now becoming my glass windshield.
Since my view of the snowfall was limited to the reach of my outside light bulb, I got sort of the same feeling as when viewing something close-up illuminated by the light from beneath a microscope’s stage.
I was also reminded of the view from the light from one of Robert Ballard’s submersible vehicles, this time submersed in the nighttime “murk” of a blizzard.
One time, a turbulent “bubble” in the wind made the snowflakes churn round-and-round, making me think they were being kicked in this direction by some giant, ice age, “abominable” guinea pig treading his circular treadmill just beyond the reach of my outside light.
Dawn’s brightness seemed lagging behind the “snow paint’s” accumulating “glow.”
In reflecting upon the recent tropical storms, and now this, I thought of those times when weather temporarily leaves its “troposheric granduer” in order to “get down and dirty” with us.

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