It"s evening, and I am leaving the building much later than everyone else.
Colleagues and staff left hours ago over a warning from the local weather service that the snow was going to be coming… and when it came it was going to be bad.
Bad, bah! It is only November, and merely the first noticeable accumulation of snow for the season. It is a Friday and next week is a short week and people are rushing around doing silly things for the holiday that produce stress instead of the feeling of peace and reflecting that we should be experiencing this time of year.
The streets are largely empty. I am not going to the closest transit stop. One far enough away that I have to walk a while and enjoy the weather and the empty streets and that the snow is casting a grey look to the buildings that I have to pass.
Then I notice it: my favorite phenomena of winter, the snowflake halo.
When snow falls, if the wind isn"t too strong, you usually see only a smear of white passing between what you are looking at and your eyes. Occasionally, if the wind picks up, the snow looks like feathers from a pillow being blown around. Both of these sights change when light is involved.
Streetlights are my favorite, the old ones that are on metal poles and have bulbs that you can actually see. When the light from these catch the falling snow, the light refracts on the crystalline structure of the flake and makes them shiny and beautiful, but only for a few feet, hence the halo effect. The flakes change from something that you pass by without a second glace, to something to look at; something that I have never been able to take a picture of, something fleeting.
Cars produce a similar effect with headlights. You see a stream of light illuminating a swath of snow and changing it to something beautiful. The snow goes from being "normal" to being bigger and softer and whiter.
Light and frozen water, who would have known?