Snowlight

It hasn't snowed here in a couple years. Oh, we've had the odd flake or dusting, but no actual pile-it-on, shovel-it-off snow. Today, it's snowing. Teeny, tiny icy blowing snow. When it snows I take a lot of pictures--not because I want to memorialize the storm, but because they're useful for writing scenes.

For instance, right now we have a quality of light I call snowlight. It's snowing briskly out there, but you can tell the clouds are thinning so there's more light. It's luminescent and bright because of the snow. Lovely. But it's not the kind of thing we remember in six months when we're writing a snow scene.

No, we're more likely to remember that cold, bluish light that comes when we first wake up to a blowing blizzardly snow. Clouds are heavier and it's darker. That's the snow most of us remember when we think about snow.

In my time, I've observed a LOT of snow. Deep snow. Slushy snow. Up-to-my-waist, I'll-never-get-this-driveway-clear-snow. I've even survived the my-roof-might-cave-in-snow. My favorite...is snowlight.