[NOV2022] If you were to page back through the several years of blog entries here, you would find that I have a tradition of declaring it “snowshoe season”, when snow gets to a depth that winter boots alone become unmanageable for getting around. The grand declaration usually takes place in late December or January but, folks, I’ve made the call on November 20th!

Up here in northern Grey County we are in the snow belt of Lake Huron and while snow is no stranger in November (or even late October), I have never seen anything like this in my 13 years here. For three days a snow squall band was sucking moisture off the lake and dropping it as snow over land. Sometimes these bands shift and move. And, well, sometimes they don’t 😦

Here at Off Grid Retreat, southwest of Owen Sound, I stabbed a metre stick in the ground a few times once the snow had tapered off and it averaged out around 60 cm, or 2 feet. Now that is the depth of settled snow on the ground; the actual fallen amount would be a bit higher but I don’t know enough how to guess at that. Half an hour up the road in Wiarton (home of Wiarton Willie, the famous albino weather-foretelling rodent), the squalls lingered for longer on day 3 and they officially recorded 120+ cm total fallen (click for related news item).

Yes, I know, it’s a beautiful winter wonderland. I can’t say I was enjoying it much whilst trying to clear snow from a 100m laneway, yurt, solar panels and more, but now that it has stopped I have some leisure time to snowshoe the trails and enjoy the scene. On a semi-related note, how I came to find this unique property was because, years ago, I would sometimes exit the ‘burbs and head for Owen Sound when I wanted a dose of real winter in the Christmas season rather than the grey slushy version of winter typically found in the GTA. When my daughter was young we would spend a December weekend in Owen Sound, staying at a B&B and walking around the Festival of Northern Lights, now in its 34th year.