Then One… Rainy… Christmas Eve?

We all know the lyrics to the Christmas classic song, 'Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,' which mention a "foggy Christmas Eve," right? Well, if the weather here in Rochester doesn't change soon, we'll need to change those to add in something about all this rain.

In fact, our holiday season so far hasn't given me much help in getting into the Christmas spirit. Sure, our decorations are up, I've done some shopping, and I've even had a holiday beverage or two. But where's the snow? We've got a whole row of evergreen trees in our backyard (you know, the sturdy kind, that doesn't mind the snow, as the song goes...) waiting for their winter dusting-- except, we don't have any snow. And the short-term forecast doesn't look very promising, either.

It HAS been an odd holiday season this year, weather-wise. It's been so dark and rainy that the string of Christmas lights on our eves and shrubs-- which are usually set to automatically turn on at dusk and stay lit for another 6 hours or so-- have been turning on mid-morning. I took this picture at about 9 this morning, and the lights were already on. Which means, of course, that they'll turn OFF at around 4pm, just when they should be turning on!

This isn't the first year the weather here in southeast Minnesota has been threatening to give us a brown Christmas. In fact, you only have to look back to last year, when we encountered a string of similar warm weather about a week before Christmas. The difference last year, though, was that we'd already HAD snow-- with the first snowfall having occurred back on November 11th.

So what do you think--  will we have a white Christmas this year?