Snow in Myrtle Beach? AGAIN?!

I can't believe this weather we're having.  This snowed a bit last night as I noticed when getting up to let the girls out.  It didn't really stick except in a few thin areas, and by the time I woke up it was all gone and was no longer snowing.  Then earlier this afternoon I decided to go for a walk.  I got all bundled up and then as I was putting the last touches on my please-don't-let-me-freeze outfit, I looked outside and saw it was snowing again!  Quite a bit actually.  I went for my walk and it snowed the entire hour I was outside.  It is in fact still snowing.  It's still not sticking anywhere.  It's kind of weird to see all this snow just pouring down and having it disappear as soon as it hits the ground. The puddles aren't even iced over.

Another bit of strange is that this is the SECOND time this year that it has snowed!  It snowed already this February.  Except that time it actually stuck. 

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I can't remember it ever snowing two years in a row, much less twice in the same year.  I hope this isn't going to be the new normal.  I'm ready to go back to the milder winters.  I hate being cold.  Give me spring and early summer weather all year round, please.  This is all especially hard to take since I just got back from a vacation to Maui, where it was beautifully warm and perfect. *sigh* 

A Hint of Fall

After a long, hot summer I'm really glad to have a few nights where the temperatures drop below roasting.  Every chance I get I turn the AC off and open the windows so I can finally have some fresh air in the house and enjoy the cooler temperatures.  It's a shame they don't hang around any longer than they do.  This is the time of year that I get to enjoy these teasing hints of fall and long for autumn when I enjoy the weather all day long, and not just from midnight to dawn.  It won't be long before those days are here. And they'll last about an instant before it starts getting TOO cold and I whine about that instead of whining about the heat.

I love the idea of having four seasons each year - a complete fall, winter, spring and summer.  Down here it seems we skip spring and fall and just have a quick transition from summer to winter.  I'd love to live in a small town somewhere that has a nice crisp fall, with changing leaves and fall festivals complete with hay rides, bonfires, pumpkin patches and all that fun stuff.  But that same magic place would probably have horribly long, cold, snowy winters.  Yuck!  Snow is okay once in a blue moon so long as it doesn't last more than a day or two and doesn't happen every year.  But every winter, all winter?  No thanks!

The Heat Won

So today I finally broke down and turned on the AC.  I might be the only one in Myrtle Beach who waits until June to turn it on every year, but I love the fresh air that comes from leaving the windows open.  My DH and I like to be warm, so we try to last as long as we can before we give in.  Basically when the nights start getting warmer it's time to turn on the air conditioning.  This year I'm actually early!  Normally we don't turn it on until we almost can't sleep at night for the heat and humidity.  It hasn't quite gotten that bad yet (thanks to ceiling fans) but based on this week's upcoming forecast it wouldn't have been long! 

Now I just need a swimming pool.  I miss having a pool so badly.  I was actually severely tempted to buy one of those inflatable kiddie pools.  They have one that's ten feet long!  Of course it's less than 2 feet deep, but at least I can lay down in it and swish my arms around some.  As the summer gets hotter I may actually get it.  My neighbors down the block just got a fancy inground pool.  I'm so jealous.  Do you think it would be too obvious if I all of a sudden decided to be neighborly and introduce myself and find reasons to come over?  I mean, DH and I have only lived here for 6 years.  It's never too late to make a new friend, right? 

When I was a kid we didn't have air conditioning until I was in 7th grade.  And even then it was just one single window unit for the whole house.  How in the world did I survive those summers without sweating to death?  Oh wait, I remember.  We had a pool! 

Spring is in the Air!

Winter is finally gone, and Spring is in the air! Well, maybe not in some places.  But it is here in South Carolina.  For those of you who are still only dreaming of Spring, here are some tips for recognizing it.  The first signs will be the little bits of green that start peeking out of the ground, and buds appearing on the branches of flowering trees.  The changes happen quickly around here.  The Bradford Pear trees are always so pretty when they are covered in their white blooms.

But in a couple weeks, the real signs of Spring take over.  Those of you with allergies know what I'm talking about.  Pollen.  You can't escape the tree sperm, folks.  It covers every surface in sight with a sheen of yellow.  I'm lucky enough not to have allergies, but sometimes it gets so heavy in the air that it does cause some sinus problems.  I wait with bated breath all Winter long for the first warm weather that will allow me to turn off the heat and open the windows.  I love that fresh air!  Of course that means everything in my house also gets coated with pollen, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.  I have laminate wood floors, and I can Swiffer them clean in the morning and within a few hours there will already be another layer of pollen covering them.  When my dog Pixie spends a lot of time outdoors, she'll come back inside and she'll look like she's got a green tinge with all that yellow sitting on her black fur!  Poor girl.

But April showers bring May flowers and all that, so every now and then we'll get a good rain (or a big storm like last night) and the world will be washed clean of all the pollen, at least for a little while.  Except of course for the places where it pools and puddles.  Like the lines in the sidewalk of my front yard and the edge of my driveway. 

There is yet another sign of Spring that is hard to ignore.  The mosquitos.  I swear these things are alive and well all during Winter too, but we just don't notice them because we don't have any exposed skin for them to latch onto.  My father-in-law was in town this week, visiting from Oklahoma.  He seemed quite surprised when he saw a few mosquitos during his visit.  He used to live in South Carolina, but apparently his years in OK have caused him to forget how big and bad they get here.  They're practically our state bird. 

I hope all of you out there are enjoying any Spring weather you may be having.  And for the rest of you who are still trapped in Winter, have no fear.  Spring is on the way!

Snow in Myrtle Beach? Really?

There have been a whole lot of wacky weather events in the past few years.  Myrtle Beach has also had some weird weather this year!  We got SNOW, people.  Not freezing rain, not sleet, not a handful of flurries that melt before hitting the ground - REAL SNOW!!  And it actually stuck to the ground and accumulated!  I must admit I scoffed at The Weather Channel when I woke up that Friday morning (this post is way overdue!) and they were forecasting snow that would accumulate 3 to 5 inches.  Ha!  No way!  But despite my disbelief, I was secretly hoping they were right.  We get snow so extremely rarely around here that it's a great fun novelty.  Even if it doesn't stick, I love to watch the flakes falling.  One of the reasons it's never a big problem is because it usually doesn't stick so it doesn't get in the way of anything, and it never lasts long.  We do always get a surge in car wrecks of course due to the ice on the roads since we don't have salt trucks.  But otherwise getting snow here is awesome. 

I kept checking outside all day, waiting to spot that first barrage of snowflakes.  By late afternoon they were here.  My DH and I went out to Jersey Mike's to pick up some sandwiches for dinner, and as we walked back outside the wind slapped a handful of snowflakes in my face.  Snow is so much softer than rain, isn't it?  It took quite some time for it to start sticking, but I kept going outside like every hour to watch it fall and see it accumulating.  After it started sticking I kept taking pictures, pictures, and more pictures so I could track the progress.  I love how taking pictures with the flash at night makes the falling snowflakes light up.  It's so pretty! 

I cannot believe how much snow we actually got.  I don't remember ever getting anywhere near that much snow in the past decade at least.  I got up early the next morning to see that even more snow had fallen while I slept.  I took a picture of my footprints to kind of get an idea of how deep the snow was.  This is awfully impressive for Myrtle Beach. Half the neighborhood seemed to be out there with me, taking pictures of all the snow.  It's a good thing we all got out there early, because as soon as the sun came up, it quickly started melting.  The snow slid from the trees in little mini avalanches, and by noon almost all the snow was gone.  By the end of the day the only snow left was the few patches in deep shade and the small snowmen built by the neighbors across the street.  Here and gone in a mere 24 hours.  I'm very glad I took so many pictures so I can remind myself of the beauty of all that snow.  That being said, I'm still glad I live somewhere that doesn't get snow often. I can handle a small snow every several years when it quickly gets out of the way.  This way I get to really enjoy and appreciate it all. 

Is It Spring Yet?

It's bad enough that it's winter and I have to deal with dreary cold days that are short on sunshine.  But this year, with all its big bad storms and extra cold temps is driving me batty.  I almost blew a gasket when I got last month's electric bill.  It was $12 shy of being DOUBLE the month before.  And we'd been out of town for a week!  I'm dreading what it's going to be this month.  Thankfully today is nice and sunny - so far at least.  It would be even better if our house was situated so that some of that sun would actually pour into the windows.  Then I could curl up in front of the window in a nice patch of sunshine like a cat.

So every day I cheer the fact that it is one day closer to spring.  I can't wait to be able to turn off the heat and open all the windows!  To be warm and have all that fresh clean air breezing through the house.  Those days will inevitably feel all too brief and then I'll be whining about the heat and humidity, and how I wish I could step onto my porch without being instantly slicked with sweat.  *sigh*  Oh, to live in Hawaii with its beautiful weather all year round! 

Photo snagged from here.