The Esquimaux have a thousand words for sleet…

Oh the weather outside is sleety
and I’m here with my sweety
so no matter the icy blows
(quelque chose, quelque chose, quelque chose)

It turns out the Inuit don’t have a word for sleet. Well, perhaps they do. How would I know? They may also have a word for “frozen fish fed to husky dogs and later vomited on the trail.” Or they may not, and certainly if they do, I don’t know it. But the weather and the Eskimos are always good for conversation this time of year, and outdoors at our place it is now sleeting to beat the band. The deck is a treacherous patch of ice. Each of the thousands of fallen leaves littering the grounds appears to be a little cup full of shaved ice. And ice covers the driveway like a thick transparent coat of urethane. This is the kind of precipitation that weighs down the tree branches and eventually snaps them off.