Monday, December 12, 2005

white out



The morning after the snowstorm, acres of cornfield are transformed by the white blanket. The occasional cornstalk or silo in the distance are the only features as land and sky meld together in a frosty image. The view is not quite monotone as the light of winter creates beautiful pink and blue tones.

This is not acutally a white out, which is a very dangerous atmospheric condition. I've driven in a white out and can honestly say it's the only time in my very long life that I've been truly frightened. A huge snowstorm blanketed everything, making the landscape totally featureless. The roads had not yet been plowed, so it was not clear where the road ended and where the field began. It was continuing to snow and thus the sky was color of the ground snow - - and it had warmed up enough that it was foggy! That's a white out.

Luckily I knew the road very well, and fainty, ever so faintly, I could make out the very top of some fence posts on the right hand side. Mentally I calculated in my head the distance of the fence posts from the road, and driving slowly I was able to keep the car on the road. It's what we call in the midwest "White Knuckle White Out Time".

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

My goodness how beautiful does that look :-)

Rachel said...

So flat and so cold and so pretty!

srp said...

In the 1967 blizzard that happened. Mom was coming home from school and thought she knew where the driveway was. She missed and her little car ended up in the ditch to stay there for the next week and a half. No school, no one went anywhere. I do miss snow.

R.Powers said...

I need sunglasses.