May Day 2013. . . . no. . . Mayday! Mayday!

This is what we woke up to this morning.

You might be thinking I am recycling pictures, but no, this was taken this morning at 8 am - May 1. May Day. Instead of finding candy or flowers by our door, we find this. We have between 4 to 5" by now. It is heavy, wet snow since the temperature is around 34 F. As I am writing this, just now the snow has let up quite a bit, but still coming down, and it is 10:45 am. We are in a winter weather advisory until 4 am tomorrow morning so there will be more coming. Streets are slushy since they are still a bit warm from the last few days of 70 and 80 degree weather. I cannot remember another April with several inches of snow every week of the month, and now, May 1, with a chance of rain/snow again this weekend. I think the world has turned upside down. After all, the southern hemisphere is having fall going into winter right now. But. . . . we, in the northern hemisphere, are the ones having winter weather instead of spring.

Every year about the second weekend of May, Orange City, Iowa - a town 16 miles away - has a big Tulip Festival. The town is very big on the Dutch heritage of this area, and the festival brings people from all over to see the parades and the hundreds (maybe thousands) of tulips blooming all over the town. This year they are getting worried the tulips won't be in bloom in time. Last year they were concerned the tulips would be all done blooming by the time of the festival because we had such an early spring. And most tulips were done by then, except for some late bloomers. I have just a few tulips very close to the house foundation and they are only up a couple of inches high yet. I would go out and take a picture of them, but I am not tripping through that wet snow.