Christmas in the Finger Lakes was more like spring with temperatures in the fifties, but no one really thought that this would last. On the first Monday of the New Year, we were awakened by strong winds which rattled the vinyl siding on our house as the first edge of a massive cold front passed through Canandaigua. There’s something about an approaching storm which places man and animals on alert. Perhaps it’s the changing air pressure or the winds which warn of the storm’s approach. But this storm was just beginning so I decided to capture the change in the landscape to our south.
I drove along the west side of Canandaigua Lake. As I proceeded further south, I ran into snow squalls which were coming over the top of the Bristol Mountains. The southern end of Canandaigua Lake has just started to freeze. Gone were all of the ducks and the duck hunters that I had seen just a week earlier. As I drove into Naples, NY, the weather cleared a bit. But it was cold in the Naples Valley – about 10 degrees. Ice could be seen forming in the Naples Creek along Route 21 as I headed south.
Route 21 south starts to rise again as one heads south towards North Cohocton, NY and the snow squalls started to pick up once again. There along route 21 I spotted the first two wind machines. They were hard at work, generating electricity for those in the valley. These machines are giants. I pulled over and took a couple of pictures and then I looked back to Naples. The ski over Naples was a clear blue, but I was standing in the midst of a snow storm!
In between squalls, I took a few more pictures. The winds were bitterly cold and I was happy to have a nice warm truck to return to as my fingers soon became numb with the cold. I looked at the fields. Only a couple of months ago, there was corn growing here but now the fields were at rest. The corn has been safely stored as winter feed for the cows. It’s the end of the growing cycle and the start of a New Year!
