I enjoyed my drive to work Monday morning. It was the perfect snow. One I could enjoy as I drove, watching puffy white snow drift slowly to earth.

There was no slipping, sliding or colorful language regarding others driving on I-70. Everyone seemed to be on their best behavior.

As I exited the interstate, I waved to the cattle in their winter pastures. I gave a wide berth to the snow plows and salt trucks.

What a gift it is to watch peacefully falling snow.

My family takes snow seriously. More precisely, my family takes the first snow of the season seriously.

While snow fell over Thanksgiving weekend across our northern region of Kansas, in my hometown of Wichita, no snow fell.

As a reporter who writes copiously about drought (or more recently, a seeming lack of a drought) in Ellsworth County, why do I care about snow in Wichita?

It’s simple: My wacky family holds its annual snow contest (more formally called the prediction contest).

I’m fairly sure I’ve written about our family’s annual contest in years past, so I’ll jump right to the good stuff.

It finally snowed in Wichita Monday morning. My family has had numerous arguments about what is and isn’t snow, where it must snow, etc. We’re a competitive bunch who likes to win, so probably a decade ago, we landed on the Wichita airport as the official location for the first snow. This is primarily because the airport keeps public records about precipitation.

At 11:53 a.m. Dec. 1, light snow was reported at Eisenhower Airport.

My sister won this year’s snow contest ... by a slim margin.

The margins get slim when more than one person selects the same date. Snow contest entries are submitted via sealed envelope, so it’s common for more than one person to select the same date. In fact, this year, three dates were selected by two people.

Like our local election board, we opt to flip a coin in this instance and the winner is able to choose which portion of the day they will get. Sometimes, a participant has a narrow 12-hour window for snow to fall. Those days are always exciting. Will it snow before noon or won’t it?

My sister’s luck held this year, and the airport’s hourly report showed snow a mere seven minutes before noon ... netting her the traveling trophy and bragging rights for the entire year.

I’m thankful the first snow is in the books, and that it was a soft, slow affair.

Bonar is the editor/publisher of the I-R and can be reached at kbonar@indyrepnews. com.