When Snowfall and Pranks Collide: April Fool’s Day 2023 Winter Storm Edition

April Fool’s Day, 4/1/2023, Saturday

Today has been quite an eventful day. It’s 3/31/23 and yet another snowstorm is upon us. The rain turned to snow and is expected to continue until this morning. With numerous snowstorms this season, they no longer surprise me. Last night, I went to bed around midnight—unusually late for me—and was awakened at 1:30 am by my daughter who needed to talk. To my surprise, my husband had also left our room. I found him working on his business. A few hours later, I woke up needing the restroom. My husband handed me a flashlight. Confused, I soon realized we had lost power, likely due to the ongoing mixed rain and snow.

I awoke around 8 am this morning to find the power restored—much to my relief. When I looked outside, it was a winter wonderland. Anticipating heavy, wet snow would require extra effort to shovel, I chose to wait. It’s a Saturday, so I knew the city would take its time plowing our street. Around 10 am we started shoveling our driveway; after clearing the snow from our cars, we began the laborious process with three of us using hand shovels and one with a snow thrower. Throughout the task, I had to change boots three times and even fell into the snow once. By 1:30 pm, the city finally plowed our street but left us with additional work at the entrance of our driveway. Happy that they finally plowed our street but frustrating that we now have to removed the snow that the plow left us.

News reports state that this is the third snowiest season for our area, with numerous power outages and accidents all over. Temperatures this year are approximately ten degrees below average for this time period. Just when it seemed like the snow was almost gone, we were hit again by another storm. Will winter ever loosen its grip, or are we stuck with an elongated snowy season, intruding into April? This is turning out to be quite the memorable April Fool’s Day.