I wanted to be with you alone and talk about the weather.

We got seven inches of snow last night. There are several things I love about New York City snowstorms, not the least of which is the mere fact that they happen at all. Snow rarely sticks in this city because of the heat off the buildings and from the subway, and global warming in general, and I love snow, so I'm grateful for any hefty dumping that doesn't melt on contact. And then there's the untainted beauty of a pure snowfall on a brownstone before the plows come and grey it all up. And the more active folk cross-country ski down the street because fewer cars are out when the roads are slippery. And all the families in my brownstone have their fireplaces going and the building smells warm with burning wood. And all the TV networks have their screaming WINTER! STORM! 2009!!!!!!! Graphics of Doom, but the lovely NY1 just has some fluffy snowflakes floating around on their background because they know there's no need to panic.

But what I love most about snowstorms is when they happen at night. And last night's was spectacular. Please bear with my extemporaneous rhapsodizing.

One of the reasons why I love living in Brooklyn so much is that it gets dark at night. In Manhattan, the lights are so bright that even when there are fewer on, the sky still glows. It never gets completely dark. Brooklyn gets dark, but when it snows at night in my borough, the combination of cloud cover, the reflection of the whiteness on the ground, the lights across the river in Manhattan and the glow of the lights in downtown Brooklyn combine to render the sky light grey, like an aura, and the space around you is almost silver. Last night, the cloud cover must have been so thick that the mirroring of the city's lights off of it turned the sky orange. It was such a strange color that when I went to bed, I thought the yellow-orange hue in my backyard was from a neighbor's outdoor light. The entire backyard glowed tangerine, kind of a sunset after dark. It was practically postapocalyptic. And snowstorms at night are so quiet. Manhattan never gets that quiet. When it snows in Brooklyn, you can hear a pin drop. In the snow. Ba dum bum.

Now, I'm just spitballin' here. For all I know, the glowing and orange and aura and silver could be caused by some environment-damaging, skin-burning, people-eliminating cousin of the many things destroying our planet. And that would be horrible. But it sure is pretty.