October 31
It was unseasonably cold. 20 degreed in Ocotber. The snow started as a light dusting. The air cold enough to prevent the ice crystals from grouping into clumps. That came later.
As the temperature rose the flakes got bigger and bigger. The trees had yet to lose their leaves, so small mountains of snow gathered atop their branches.
Deep in the forest in an area now filled with now drooping evergreens stood a single elm. The evergreens, built for snow, simply bent with the layers of snow not on top of their branches.
Distantly came the sounds of trees shattering under the snow’s weight. It sounded like explosions.
No one was there to see that single elm being to twitch, and then suddenly like a wet dog, twist and shake and toss all the snow from it’s branches.