The Smell of Snow

A frosty morning captured on a neighbouring farm a few years ago

Thursday afternoon…

The air smells like snow today — not surprising, according to the latest weather forecast which predicts up to 4″ of the white stuff before it changes to rain.  Do you know that smell?  When the air actually feels heavier as you breathe it — not wet, as it does before and after a rain storm, but heavy with frost and crystals and sharp cold.  It’s a distinctly different smell that I can never put a finger on, one that is best described as feeling like “bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens”, perhaps?  One that conjures up memories of red toboggans and Christmas mornings.  A smell that, if you close your eyes, can whisk you off to childhood for one fleeting moment.  That smell is in the air today.

Curious about such things, I googled “the smell of snow” and came up with a few interesting, scientific tidbits.  On AllExperts.com, this question and answer by meteorological expert, Donald Rosenthal:

Question

I can smell approaching snow on the wind.  Why does crystallized water have a smell?  I grew up in Maryland, spent two years in Colorado, and currently live in Northern California, and in each of these areas, the approaching snow has virtually the same odor . . .  But what causes it?

Answer

You have a good sense of smell!

Some  of the chemicals that can be in snow are:

Nitrogen dioxide, formaldehyde, nitric acid, dimethyl sulphide and sulphate and methanesulphonate. All of these have distinctive odors and the combination is probably what you smell.

Interesting, isn’t it?  But truly, I think “the smell of snow” comes from our memories, like the smell of a new box of Crayons can transport me back to first grade with one inhalation.  Or the way the first wisps of woodsmoke on a frosty evening signal the start of colder weather.  Or how baking bread produces an aroma that incites contentment.

As darkness falls, the air smells like snow — copper kettley, woolen mitteny, red toboggany snow.

_______

Friday morning…

I guess my sniffer wasn’t far off. :-)

A Gloomy, But Golden Day

It’s a gloomy, rainy day in Windsor town today.

But even gloomy days can provide a beautiful landscape, such as this colourful viburnum with it’s burgundy-rust leaves and bright red berries.

In fact, rainy days can be positively golden.  This spirea hedge provides a ribbon of gold along one side of the property.

On the opposite side of the lot, poplars stand naked in a sea of golden ferns.

Despite recent high winds, this burning bush manages to hang on to some of it’s wonderful colour.

This maple still provides splashes of bright colour along the edge of the driveway and a golden carpet beneath its scraggly branches.

And what could be prettier than these tiny crabapples, bejeweled with raindrops with a tangerine hedge of wild roses as a backdrop.

There’s a bit of wabi-sabi from the balcony today — it’s a gloomy, but golden day.

The Frosty Kiss of Autumn

When the frosty kiss of Autumn in the dark
Makes its mark
On the flowers, and the misty morning grieves
Over fallen leaves;
Then my olden garden, where the golden soil
Through the toil
Of a hundred years is mellow, rich, and deep,
Whispers in its sleep…

- Henry Van Dyke