I'm sure we will have a white Christmas

It snowed yesterday.

Not a big dump.

Only four or five inches.

But it’s going nowhere.

There’s a very good chance this snow will still be on the ground come March, and very little chance it will melt before then.

We don’t typically get a lot of snow up here, but what falls this late stays. Malta is just far enough north to miss the chinook winds that bring relief to much of the rest of the state.

Months pass in the dark of winter here without the mercury ever rising above freezing. We tell ourselves it keeps out the riff-raff.

I’ve lived in other parts of Montana where the snow came and stayed, but that was because of the elevation or the nearby proximity of mountains. Malta sits on the prairie. The nearest mountain range -- the Little Rockies -- is a distant silhouette on the horizon.

But I’m not complaining.

Especially this year.

Until it all turned white last week, the landscape in this part of the state had been dun colored since spring when it was dun colored with just the slightest hint of green.

There was not much green-up this year. The on-going drought combined with extreme heat and an infestation of grasshoppers took care of that.

The recent snowfall was hardly a drought-breaker, but at least it put an end to the dust, and provided a cover for the winter wheat.

And we’ll have a white Christmas.

I’m sure of it.

That’s not the case everywhere in Montana. I remember a heavy snowfall in Bozeman in early December that was gone by Christmas Day. An even heavier snowfall struck Livingston in the middle of the month when I lived there promising a white Christmas, but the winds picked up a few days later and blew it all to Big Timber.

I also remember waking Christmas morning to nearly three feet of fresh snow in Bozeman, and driving over the hill to Livingston where there was at least two feet on the ground. We could sure use another winter like that this year.

But while we may not get another storm in Malta before Christmas, it won’t matter. Come Christmas morning this snow, a bit dingy and worn by then, will still be on the ground.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]