Last week, I heard from a friend who was eagerly awaiting the next chapter in what should possible be renamed Misadventures in America. He is in luck, because the Universe was poised to give us our next lesson in surviving adversity without a whole lot of hassle.
Here in the U.S., autumn is often referred to as fall because the leaves fall from the trees. Last week, the term fall got an addendum. Not just leaves falling, but snow. It was first forecast early in the week by some European meteorologists - meteorologists who were greeted with amused disdain by reporters here in the U.S.
I know better.
Not because I have more faith in European meteorologists. From what I can tell a lot of meteorologists from across the globe throw in a bit of psychic prediction to make up where the science is lacking, and so I don't usually trust any of them more than a day or two in advance. But this time I did my research. There has only been snow accumulation in this part of Virginia in October on five different occasions in the last 130 years, thus making it highly unlikely, thus convincing me that it would definitely happen, because if it's an unlikely weather pattern and my husband & I are in the vicinity, you can just about bet it will happen - unless we want it to.
Examples include:
- One of the worst bushfires in recorded history
- The hottest day on record shortly after arriving in Virginia
- An earthquake in Virginia where they rarely happen, also shortly after we arrived
- Really bad flooding in Queensland, known as the Sunshine State in Australia in the middle of summer when it's not supposed to rain, right as we decided to take our first vacation since our honeymoon
I'm sure I could come up with more, but the important thing is that I was certain it was going to snow long before the U.S. weather service started warning us. And snow it did. We got between four and six inches here. It started Friday night. It was beautiful, right up until Saturday morning when the power went out.
You see, it's supposed to snow in winter not autumn. When it snows in autumn, trees that haven't yet lost their leaves catch even more snow than they normally would, but they don't have the strength to hold that kind of weight, so they break all over power lines. It caused a major disaster up and down the eastern seaboard.
But I can't really complain. We spent a lovely day playing board games and drinking a combination of beer and brandy to stay warm. We laughed until our sides hurt. We took pictures. We drank hot chocolate. We even had a pizza delivered from the next town where they still had power. We slept in cozy beds.
The next morning, we began to stress a bit as without power, we had no water, and we aren't in a financial position to buy a generator or go to a hotel. We put our heads together and worked out a plan that started with me gathering snow into a bucket so that the toilets could be flushed, and the husband cooking a yummy breakfast on the barbie on the front porch. Then we would worry about other supplies.
To our delight, the power came on in the middle of cooking breakfast, and it stayed on. Now, aside from tree branches all over the neighborhood and one on our roof, you would never know that it had snowed. We're right back into sunny autumn weather. I can't help hoping the luck holds and we have a mild winter.
