Thanks everybody for all the feedback, comments and well-wishes the past few days about the photography show, as well as for all the comments over the past couple of weeks.  I’m busy working on a post to follow-up on questions, etc. from all those comments, but it’s not quite done for today.   So, instead, let’s talk about the weather.   😉

We haven’t had much snow here in Tübingen, but today we had what, to me, is a peculiar kind of storm they seem to have here. It’s sort of like snow, but the snow comes in little tiny hard pieces that bounce off both people and pavement. The pebbles aren’t as big as hail, although they do share certain properties with hail, I guess. But they look more like little snow stones … or as I call them, snow pebbles.

Snow "Pebbles"

But this kind of precipitation is delivered  in a downpour that kind of looks like a rainstorm, except it’s not quite rain, either. My ongoing challenge this winter is to have my dSLR camera handy to take a photo during one of these showers, actually, to capture that rain-like downpour motion.

Anyway,  after walking in this kind of storm for a few minutes today, my coat and backpack were still dry when I got home, since the pebbles didn’t stick, they just bounced away before they melted.

So, it’s not quite rain … and yet not quite snow. Snow-rain. That’s actually what it’s called in the weather forecasts here. Odd – I can’t recall seeing it before anywhere. Sort of like fairy-tale kind of snow, in a fairy-tale setting among all the old buildings in Tübingen. 😉

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In other snow news,  we were on a train stopped at a station recently where the snow was deep enough that the tracks were covered:

Tracks in the snow, December 2011

Which is clearly why a path had been cleared in the snow to cross the tracks in that spot. Right in front of that sign in the background that says that crossing the tracks in that spot is explicitly forbidden.

Makes sense. ,-)