More snowish than snowy

“What’s the weather doing?” my farmer asked as I pulled the curtains and peered out at the pre-dawn gloom.

“A few stars, some high cloud, lawn’s white, must be a hard frost,” I replied.

When he got up a few minutes later he told me to take a closer look, the white wasn’t frost, it was snow.

When it got a bit lighter we found it was more snowish than snowy.

As often happens, Dunedin got a dumping and the storm came up the coast to about Wainakarua then the worst of the weather went out to sea, leaving northern North Otago with a dusting of snow which stayed on the lawn and short-grazed paddocks but has already gone from the longer grass.