Welcome Boreas

Winter arrived officially, as the astronomers calculate it, at about 1:35 this afternoon, EST. But since we've had snow and hard ice on the ground for nearly three weeks, the event was anticlimatic. So far as I'm concerned, winter is here when snow and ice falls and sticks around.

In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter,
Long ago.

Christina Rossetti, "A Christmas Carol"