On Monday night, while I was outside getting some fresh air smoking a last cigarette, I noticed a few flurries in the sky. But when I woke up the next day, there was just a bit of frost on the grass. So, when Tuesday night I saw flurries again, I thought it would be gone the next morning.

I was wrong.

The backyard on Tuesday morning and another episode of “what’s the fuck am I doing here” (aka Zhu most mornings).

The first snow of the season. Another Canadian trick: going from mild weather to blizzard, from plus temperatures to minuses, from fall cold to winter freezing your ass cold. This is drastic. Clear sky to 25 cm of snow. Ouch.

Pretty deep, eh? The neighborhood where I live on Friday morning.

Snow is beautiful though. Especially fresh snow like that. It’s like seeing the whole city coated with a fresh layer of paint. We are all used to it, or so you would think, but the first snow is always a shock. “What? Already?“. Cars don’t start or get stuck in the driveway, streets and roads are extremely slippery, buses are late…

Driving in the snow is always a challenge but Canadian cars are pretty good at that. Generally speaking, people drive much slower and are quite careful, so it all works out pretty well. Phew. It would be in France…

Glad to know ice is falling, but what am I supposed to do anyway?

Downtown is usually a bit better because the streets are salted early in the morning. But still, people walk around confused and cold and there’s slush everywhere.

Cold news and downtown streets at night…

Since I grew up on the Atlantic coast in France, I had never seen snow before I came to Canada. This is my 4th winter, and I’m still excited. That said, winters are long here, and after 6 months of struggling in the cold and with ice and snow, we get tired of it.

Sugar mountain? Cotton candy?

Yep, we get tired of it. Cause you know what? This snow isn’t gonna melt before next April or May.