For most of today the skies were clear and not a sign of snow. But grocery checkout lines backed down the aisles as people raided local stores for bread and milk. The TV announced church and Monday school closings—all because of an impending, as yet to be seen, Nor’easter.

Wednesday it was so warm I went running in shorts and a t-shirt; today it’s twelve degrees Fahrenheit, and the gusts of wind push the cold through even our tightly-sealed windows. I’ve noticed that when it’s cold like this the snowflakes are stringy (instead of forming the idealized hexagons you normally think of). Confirming my observation, this page says that no one knows why, but snowflakes do form different shapes according to temperature.