Oliver and I left Halifax just before noon yesterday, stopping for coffee at Narrow Espresso, dog exercise at the Ardmore Service Dog Park, and lunch at Pete’s on the way out of town. There was word of a blizzard hitting Prince Edward Island in the early evening, and we didn’t want to end up in the middle of it, so we made good, if not hurried, time.

Short of some showers on either side of the Cobequid Pass, and some snow in the middle of it, the weather was dry and sunny, with no hint of anything else.

We made good time, dropped the car at Enterprise in Charlottetown around 4:00 p.m., and walked back downtown. The sidewalks and streets were clear, and there was a hint of spring in the air.

By the time I went to bed, around 11:00 p.m., there were a few flurries, but it looked like this blizzard was a phantom.

As such, it came as a complete shock to wake up this morning and find the Island paralyzed by a dump of 20 cm of snow blown around by high winds. Our back deck had more snow on it than it’s had all winter. There were icicles hanging from the front of the house approaching 2 feet long. The screen door at the front had blown open in the night and our vestibule was covered in a dusting of snow.

As I write, approaching noon, the sun is coming out, the snow has stopped, and things are slowly returning to normal.

This was, in short, the freakiest storm of the winter: it came out of nowhere, left buckets of snow, and then moved on before we’d had a chance to notice.

I’ve never hoped for the arrival of spring more.