We've been experiencing of late whatever nature felt like tossing our way. Snow, freezing rain, icy temperatures, milder atmospheric conditions, overcast skies making it difficult to distinguish the overhead colour from that which had blanketed the landscape; white and more white. The only colour interrupting the monochromatic white, was the stark, dark colours of tree trunks - and the occasional bright-jacketed colours of people wending their way through the forested ravine close to our street.

Yesterday we started out with billowy, cushioned, light snow covering everything, the result of all-night snow that had brightened the otherwise-dark sky the night before - that lasted until noon the following day, which just happened to be yesterday. Then followed a rise in temperature to zero, with nary a hint of wind, making for a beautiful ravine walk but a challenge to legs walking through the puffed snow on the trails, throughout our usual round-trip.

Soon after we returned home in the mid-afternoon, rain began; not freezing rain, but ordinary garden-variety rain that began to depress the lightness of the newfallen snow into moist-packed snow. That followed freezing rain and finally more snow. By this morning the wind had picked up enormously, even though the temperature remained hovering around the freezing mark.

We were encouraged by weather predictions of a fast-freeze with temperatures dropping to minus-13 by late afternoon, to get out early this morning for our ravine walk. And, it seems, plenty of others living nearby had the very same idea; we came across quite a few people walking their dogs, just as we were doing.

Despite the relatively mild temperature, once we were out of the protective confines of the ravined woods, the wind whipped an icy chill into our faces. The very same wind that has taken down some of the dead trees that have been standing for quite some time, in the ravine. A slightly elevated chance of danger...