Snowfall in la Pieve

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Citta della Pieve, Umbria.

Look­ing into the main piazza after snow

We had three inches of snow in la Pieve Fri­day night into Sat­ur­day morn­ing.  The streets are very icy right now, and the tem­per­a­ture quite low.  The BBC online has the head­line “FREEZING WEATHER BRINGS MISERY TO EUROPE.”

Not at all sure we are mis­er­able here, but it sure is cold, and three inches of snow was an unusual amount of snow­fall for this area.   It was amaz­ing Sat­ur­day morn­ing to expe­ri­ence the town’s snow removal strat­egy:  town work­ers in their tra­di­tional yel­low pants with big sil­ver reflec­tive stripes weild­ing DIRT shov­els to man­u­ally remove the snow.  Their pointed shov­els scraped the stones as they moved the snow off to one side.   Not a sin­gle snow shovel in sight because there is so lit­tle use for that design, it is not worth the expense to buy and store it.

Snow removal

Typ­i­cally the snow will melt by the end of the day, but BBC is right–the weather is extremely cold, and the snow melts and then refreezes into ice by the next day.  The main roads (out­side of town) are well cleared, though extra cau­tion is wise on the hair-pin turns when the road banks off to one side, with deep ditches just off the shoul­der.   The stone stairs of the town have been cleared with shov­els and salt.

All will be dry and warm again soon.

Looking north towards Chiusi, the town wall casts a shadow

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2 Responses to Snowfall in la Pieve

  1. Gwen Nagel on January 5, 2010 at 5:43 AM

    Happy New Year, Jill! Loved read­ing through your blog and the pho­tos of the snow in Italy are won­der­ful. I’d love to paint some of them–I adore win­ter scenes any­way, and Italy under a dust­ing of snow is gor­geous.
    I hope you are thriving–appears that way any­way. I’m try­ing to get orga­nized. I’ll be teach­ing a sec­tion for Capella start­ing next week. WIll I see you any­time soon at a Col­lo­quium? Gwen

  2. Daniela on December 22, 2009 at 9:27 PM

    Thank you, Jill! Lots of slush by Stefanini’s. The last BIG snow­fall in Pieve was on the last night of 1996. Our din­ner guests at Fontesecca noticed the first flakes at about 10pm and unce­r­i­mo­niously got up and left. Alan and I were a bit star­tled, but later under­stood: there are no ploughs in the area, bisogna arran­gia­rsi da soli, each man for him­self and were were in the coun­try, with a steep unim­proved road up to the paved one. Think­ing of you!

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