What a difference a day makes. In winter. In Ottawa. Just several days ago, brittle, icy temperature had us convinced the marrow in our very bones was being frozen, thanks to the combination of knife-edge-cutting winds and the plunged  thermometer. When the cold moderated then came the snow, and plenty of it. So we were slogging through 20 cm of snow though temperatures had risen from -20C to a pleasant enough -7C.

All that changed suddenly yesterday when the thermometer soared above freezing and we were out with our two little dogs on our daily walk in the woods in 8C weather. We had a prolonged hike in the forest and never once felt our digits were about to fall off, shattered from the icy cold. And nor did we have to put their warming winter coats on Jackie and Jillie, making do instead with their heavy raincoats, geared to both keep them warm and dry.

We even left their harnesses off, since the raincoats are equipped with little rings we can fasten their leashes to, when leaving the confines of the forest to walk along the street above, and to our house, just down the street. Their usual winter gear doesn't restrict them; they rarely react even when we have to pull on their winter boots in rigidly frigid temperatures. They seem oblivious, prancing about with boots on and scampering so vigorously they sometimes just throw off the boots irrespective of the fact that they've been carefully pulled up to mid-leg and secured with velcro.

Because of the weeks of sub-zero temperatures the creek was well frozen over and topped with a layer of snow. Which is to say that's how it was yesterday afternoon. Late yesterday afternoon the freezing rain began falling and it continued for hours. And then the temperature began rising and the freezing rain turned to ordinary rain and that ordinary rain continued all night. When we came down this morning for breakfast, thick icefog greeted our eyes out the front door. A temperature inversion caused by 8C temperatures that soon rose to 12C, and rain, more rain.

Washing away much of the accumulated snow on the ground, cleansing house roofs of their burden of snow and altering the landscape beyond recognition, taking us back to the early days of winter. Several hours later the temperature had dropped again to 0.7C, and continued dropping. It will drop until it reads -10C, for we've been warned of an impending flash-freeze. And the ordinary rain still falling will turn inevitably to freezing rain. Stiff winds are bringing all of that along in a hurry. One of those days for which that old saying "no fit weather for man nor beast" is more than appropriate.

And so, we're stuck in the house, locked out of a ravine ramble, though we can imagine that the creek, unleashed from its frozen state is madly running with melted snowpack, irresolute over whether it should succumb again to a flash-freeze, while the trails in the forest become a slick, icy network of cautious negotiation.