Appalachian Mountains

According to the World Book encyclopedia, the Appalachian Mountains "are a vast system of North American mountain ranges. They lie partly in Canada, but mostly in the United States...running 1,500 miles south and westward from Newfoundland and Labrador to central Alabama, with foothills in northeastern Mississippi....The Appalachians are some of the oldest mountains on the planet, predating the formation of the North American continent."

For our purposes today they become an important part of the answer to the question, How much snow did you get this weekend in Erie from that snowstorm, Jonas? The answer is zero inches! Our roads are clear right down to the pavement. And the reason? we are on the other side (the northwest side) of the Appalachian Mountains. The storms that come from the Gulf and head right up the east coast, generally have that mountain range as a kind of border and we don't get them at all. Ours most of the time come from Canada or from across the northern plains of the US and then across the Great Lakes.

I know it's hard to believe, since we right now hold the dubious distinction of First Place in the goldensnowglobe.com online report of snowfall for cities of 100,000 or more, but we have been snow free for a number of days and we are happy about it, thank you! All said, that doesn't mean we didn't have great sympathy and concern for some of the horrendous situations that 20+" of snow had on those huge metropolitan areas. Hopefully, now that it is past, they can get things back to their normal very-little-snow-accumulation winter.

Meanwhile, back home, our bay has frozen and the ice fishermen/women appeared immediately. The ice dunes are slowly forming along the lake shore, also. Soon they will look like this: