Intro

Winter is the only season that arrives with the flick of a switch. Spring can’t figure out what it wants, and by the time it does, it’s summer, which sneaks up on you like the gradual heating of an oven. Autumn’s a bit of a tease. One day it feels like the earth just crossed an invisible meridian where the sun is slightly less potent and the next it’s back to summer again.

But winter, well, winter announces itself with the first cold storm of the year, and there’s nothing subtle about it. It bangs the door open with a huge gust of arctic wind and blasts the world with snow from north to south, from west to east, and if you’re lucky—if we’re lucky—it keeps that up every week or so, storm after storm, a steady accumulation of snowpack, regular freshies for skiers and boarders, and none of that dangerous continental hoar that develops when it dumps in October and