Snowing again :(

It is snowing AGAIN! Why, oh why, has it snowed so many times this year?

In December, I made a gamble not to buy snow tires. I thought that 70,000 was a lot of money for a set of wheels and tires if it didn't snow. (Last winter it didn't snow.) Now I regret it because today is the 5th or 6th time we've had snow this winter ...

Snow does make things look pretty; the big magnolia tree at the front of my house looks lovely. (Better in real life than in the picture.) And as you can see, my car already has snow all over it. I'll have to take the other car to work today, because it does have snow tires.

Coming from a hot country that has very little snow, I didn't know if "snow tires" was really English or just a term used in Japan. "snow tires" is okay! They can also be called "winter tires". "stud-less tires" is also fine. The reason for "stud LESS" is that in a few Northern European countries, snow tires actually have small metal studs in them. However, it seems these are banned in most countries because they damage the road surface. You can read all about it at Wikipedia.

Someone is very happy about the snow today - KURO! He's been sitting looking out the window for the past 15 minutes or so. At first he was twitching his tail, but now he is just watching the snow. Perhaps he thinks he'd like to go outside and try and catch the falling flakes?! He is watching them so intently, it is kind of funny. He especially likes when leaves are so burdened with snow, that it suddenly falls off with a 'plop' :)

tire = American English spelling
tyre = British English spelling