About four o’clock it started snowing lightly. By seven, the roads and sidewalks were covered with a thin layer of snow — cat-track snow, just enough to make everything look white.

By ten, when I finally left church to head home, the air temperature had gotten just above freezing. A light freezing drizzle, barely enough to notice, was settling down and making the snow on the ground slippery and crunchy. The freezing drizzle left a thin film of ice on the windshield of the car, which the wipers barely cleared away.

As I walked back from the parking garage to our apartment, I could see the drizzle as a light fog or haze around the street lights. The city was as quiet as I’ve ever heard it.