Some time before four in the morning, I was awakened by the quiet. The forecast had been for sleet and rain; did they get it wrong? was it quiet because it was snowing? or was it quiet because the storm was going to miss us? I looked out the window: the street was still dry. I checked the National Weather Service Web site: rain and snow in Connecticut, headed our way. I went back to sleep, and within an hour awakened again to hear something — rain, sleet, wind-driven snow — hitting the windows.

By the time I got up, sometime after seven, the street outside our apartment was covered with several inches of windblown snow. By the time I started walking up to the church, the snow had turned to sleet, and then to freezing rain. I shoveled off one side of the front walk, and got a number of calls on my cell phone: “The town plows haven’t even reached out house yet, I won’t be in”; “Just checking to see if someone was at church”; “I’m on my way, I’ll be a little late.”

Some twenty people showed up for the worship service, less than half our usual fifty-to-sixty people. Many of them lived within walking distance, including the two newcomers, but one person made it all the way from Westport, a good half hour drive. After the worship service, he told me, “I started out following the plow, usually that’s the best thing to do in a storm. But it was raining by then, and the plow was pushing water — the water was deeper behind the plow than in front — so I wound up having to pass the plow.” It was pouring rain during the worship service.

Our plowing service still hadn’t showed up by one o’clock as we were leaving the church. Mark, who happened to be driving his truck with the plow on it, volunteered to plow the church parking lot. His plow scooped up water and slush and snow drenched in water, and at the end of each pass when the plow hit the snowbank, there was a huge splash as muddy water went ten or twelve feet into the air. I finished shoveling the sidewalk and stairs; it got up to almost fifty degrees this afternoon, but it’s supposed to dip well below freezing tonight, and any snow left on the sidewalks tonight will turn into a block of ice that will last until spring.

I ate lunch, tired and sore from shoveling that wet, heavy snow. By the time I went back up to the church for the youth group meeting, the rain had stopped. And when we left after the youth group meeting, the temperature was just about at freezing: black ice forming everywhere.

This is just about the worst weather New England can dish out. In the past twenty-four hours we have seen snow, freezing fog, sleet, freezing rain, rain, mist, fog, and what the Weather Service called “unknown precipitation.” The ground is covered with heavy wet snow, which has been made even heavier by all the rain that fell on top of the snow. Now everything is going to freeze solid, and with the short days and long nights nothing is going to thaw out for a very long time. The heavy snow saps your physical strength; the darkness and dreariness saps your emotional strength; and you long for summer, or a trip to someplace warm.