Cloud drama

The day started out a smidgeon over the freezing mark, and it warmed quite a bit from there. Since we've had a genuine killing frost, if the temperature nudged the 60 degree mark, I'd be able to call our weather Indian Summer-ish. But it never got quite that warm, so I'd affix a semi- to the designation that marks a pattern peculiar to the Northeast—and well-documented since the last part of the 16th-century. While the temperature didn't make the grade, the color of the sunset was certainly more akin to pastel balmy than black-and-white cold. Rather than summer, however, It felt and looked like a late afternoon in April when the worst of the season's chill is past and you can start thinking about planting less-than-absolutely-hardy crops. It also felt like rain, which, in these drought times, would be a blessing at any time of the year.