We’ve all grown up with the old adage if March comes in like a lion it will go out like a lamb…or vice versa. Of course, the former is more likely to be true merely because it would make sense that as spring approaches the weather will gradually improve.  As for the former, that could easily happen, too, because March weather is so volatile. Warm fronts from the south begin pushing north while those cold Canadian fronts continue to push south. When they meet…well…that’s why we have some of our worst winter storms in March.

This year March came in like a lamb. I wrote last week how the mild temps were teasing us with the smell of spring in the air. But we were less than a week into the month and we were hit again with a whopper of a storm. It started the morning of the fifth with the hard winds that blew in advance of the front. Our yard quickly became littered with branches, both large and small. I watched knowing that once the snow melted we’d have to go out and collect them. Hard gusts rattled the pipe leading down to the gas fireplace in the living room and shook the windows. In the afternoon we had sleet one minute, snow the next, and then back to sleet. The icy pellets danced on the back deck, reminding me of the styrofoam beads that spill from a beanbag chair if it’s ripped. By evening the snow won and the wind blew it into white-out conditions. A soup supper and card game night planned with two other couples had to be cancelled due to hazardous driving.

Then the next morning it was all over. The sun was out and so were the shovels, snow blowers, and snow plows…again. I spent two hours clearing about four inches of very heavy wet snow from the driveway. The end with all the waterlogged deposits from the plow was the worst. I’m hoping this will be the last time I have to do this, but I wouldn’t put any money down on that bet. At least the temperature wasn’t all that bad, or maybe it just seemed that way as I heated up from the shoveling. It definitely helped that the wind had died down to a gentler breeze. And now it’s cold again.

But this is what March is like, every year, and it’s just another sign that spring is coming.