You might wonder what’s so strange about the above image of an ice carver at this past weekend’s Ice and Snow Festival here in Keene, NH. What could be more quintessentially New England, you might ask, than the thought of bundled small-town crowds oohing and ahhing over ice carvings and snow sculptures?

What’s strange about these images isn’t the subject in the foreground: a guy with a chainsaw sculpting a massive block of ice or a shrunken-head snowman in a quiet downtown alley. Instead, what’s strange is the fact that there is finally snow in downtown Keene, and it’s February. In a place where it isn’t unusual to get the season’s first snowstorm in October or November, this year we have had only two light dustings of snow in December and January, neither accumulation being deep enough to shovel much less make a snowman.

This past weekend, as if on cue, we got an ankle-deep accumulation of snow the night before the annual Ice and Snow Festival. Do you think festival organizers did some serious prayer and supplication to ensure such picture-perfect results?