Snow Follies in Wellfleet ...

Woo-hoo! 100 followers. Welcome, Julee Hastings. Since being number 100 is a milestone, you have just won a prize. Send me your address via the Web site contact email and I will shoot something off to you in sunny California. Not so much sun this weekend here in Wellfleet. In fact, the snow took the forecasters by surprise. We had 8 to 10 inches, when 2 to 4 were predicted. Everything looks so lovely cloaked in a mantle of white. Check out the windows and flowers painted on this Lond Pond Road garage. The snow really makes the design stand out.

Chez Sven had its first guests of the season, adventurous folks from Western Massachusetts, who arrived in a Prius. They drove down to Provincetown for the day around 11 o’clock. The forecasters in Amherst had predicted rain on Cape Cod. No one likes rain for a holiday weekend, so our guests seemed psyched to hear there might be some snow. Beaches are much more interesting with patches of white here and there. Fortunately, these folks did think to bring sturdy boots. Imagine their surprise to have all those snowflakes fall out of the sky by evening!

Sven and I were having dinner with a friend: goat stew, fresh baked bread, salad. There came a rapping on our door. Chez Sven has three doors, and I never know which one to open. I went to the side door, which Wellfleetians usually use. No one there. So, I decided what we had heard must have been a particularly energetic chipmunk, shifting his stash of nuts around in the attic, or maybe a mouse caught in the Have-a-Heart trap? But, the rapping came again, louder this time. I hopped over to the front door and there were the daughters of our guest. Mom’s car was stuck in a snowdrift at the bottom of Old King’s Highway. Did we have a shovel? The friend and I headed out with several. Meanwhile, a policeman had stopped his car, seeing a damsel in distress. Lights were flashing red and blue on the snowy landscape.

Since Old King’s had not yet been plowed, access from Long Pond Road was the only option. But, our guest wanted to keep her new Prius out of drifting snow, an understandable request. We left the car in one of the town’s parking lots, drove her back to the cottage, and accompanied her to the car in the morning.

This winter Wellfleet has not seen bitter cold like 2011. Last year there was an inch of ice on Old King’s Highway and it remained for three weeks. (Here's a look at snowy Commercial Street, by two o'clock. It was around that time that Wellfleetians decided to stay inside and wait for improvement.)

Unexpected snow can produce drama. I remember riding back to Vassar with a friend when the New York Thruway was summarily closed due to a snowstorm that no one had foreseen. Have you had any wild experiences, being stuck in snow?