As the owner of an extensive concrete driveway and patio, as well as a fifty-foot frontage of "city" sidewalk that local by-laws say I am responsible to keep clear, and as neighbour to a pair of eighty-something-year-olds whose walks are linked to mine, and for whom I provide an unofficial clearing service (if I do not, they go out and do it themselves, "for the fresh air and exercise"--recent hip surgery and incipient heart condition under treatment notwithstanding), I am less thrilled with the situation.
My back is stiff, and my mood a bit raw from shovelling and reshovelling and reshovelling and sweeping before eventually ceding the issue and using a small electric snow-thrower. All this to clear that area more times than there have been grey, low-pressure system days of consecutive snowfall. But I am trying not to be a sorehead.
After all, today is the day of redemption. A brilliant, clear sky. A brilliant full-circle ice halo, with sun dogs on the south-eastern horizon just after sunup. Air crisp all the way to the bottom of the lungs. The view from my office window a study in high contrast. This is the kind of winter to celebrate.
Sun dogs (technically known as parhelia, a Greek word meaning "beside the sun") are, for the uninitiated (i.e. from places that never get cold enough for them and for ice halos), bright reflections from the sun, at 22 degrees left and or right from the sun itself. They are created by the prismatic effect of ice crystals in the air. And they can be spectacular, when they are not blinding a person with their brilliance, and causing automobile accidents either from the blinding, or from the distraction that often results from their appearance.
This is a partial ice halo with sun dogs, photographed in South Dakota by Joe Unterbrunner
But if we are going to celebrate the cold beauty, better to do it today. The forecast is for 10-30 cm. or so of new snow in the next two days.
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