If this is how it's going to be, give me my f***ing reservation.

Snow!

Incredibly, it began snowing this morning! This is the earliest that anyone in my family can remember it snowing in this area (my in-laws have lived her since 1977). Not only is it snowing, it's accumulating! I took the above picture this afternoon about 13 km (8 miles) from my house. At 16:00 it was already accumulating on the hilltops. (The spot in the picture is about 610 m/2000 ft. A.M.S.L.) It started accumulating at my house (about 350 m/1150 ft.) around 19:30. We're expecting about 1 cm tonight - not much, but more than we're used to this time of year!

First Hard Frost?

Well, we had another frost on A.D. 2009 October 02. This time the temperature was 33 degrees Fahrenheit and somewhere between 50 and 85 percent of the lawn was crunchy from ice. I decided that I would call it a "hard" (killing) frost if the tomatoes were dead when I got home. Well, two of the four lost their tops, and all of them had a little browning at their leaf tips. My wife says that constitutes a killing frost, but I was hoping for something a little more definitive. I'm still thinking about what to call it...

The time has come...

...to fire up the wood stove. Mom and sister are here from Georgia, and they're complaining that the house is too cold (61 degrees F.). ...So is the wife, for that matter. Tomorrow morning I'll start a fire, making A.D. 2009 September 27 the first fire of the season.

First Light Frost

The growing season is still going (strong), but it nearly ended this morning. It was 35 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1.6 degrees Celsius) this morning, and there were patches of frost throughout the landscape. Our backyard was particularly frosty after having been mowed yesterday afternoon. I was very pleased to see some ice again (my favorite season is winter), and I look forward to even colder dips in temperature (and the subsequent killing of the pollen-producing weeds that are currently plaguing me) in the near future.