Splat snow

How can I describe today’s weather, with a nor’easter bringing overnight rain that is currently changing to snow?

First, I’ll note that most of our storms this year have brought more rain than snow, causing some locals to coin the term “pour’easter” to describe a winter storm that is more wet than snowy. Today’s storm was forecast as a traditional nor’easter bringing high winds and more than a foot of snow to Western parts of the state, but here in eastern Massachusetts, we’re experiencing a storm that is half pour and half nor: a pour-nor’easter?

Second, it’s just before 2:00 pm, and I’m wearing my third pair of pants, socks, and gloves of the day, having changed out of wet clothes after walking the dog in the morning and with J midday. I’ll probably have to change clothes again after getting home from an afternoon errand, it being a cold and drenching kind of day.

Third, while cleaning wet, sludgy snow from my car in advance of that aforementioned afternoon errand, I quietly coined a new term to describe pour-nor’easter precipitation: splat snow, based on the sound it makes when you brush it off your car and it lands as a clumpy puddle on the pavement below.