Snow turning to rain though a fine hail.

January 21.

The sky has gradually become overcast, and now it is just beginning to snow. Looking against a dark roof, I detect a single flake from time to time, but when I look at the dark side of the woods two miles off in the horizon, there already is seen a slight thickness or mistiness in the air. 

The snow is turning to rain through a fine hail.

Pines and oaks seen at a distance — say two miles off — are considerably blended and make one harmonious impression. The former, if you attend, are seen to be of a blue or misty black, and the latter form commonly a reddish-brown ground out of which the former rise. These colors are no longer in strong contrast with each other. 

Few twigs are conspicuous at a distance like those of the golden willow. The tree is easily distinguished at a distance by its color. 

Saw in an old white pine stump, about fifteen inches from the ground, a hole peeked about an inch and a half in diameter. It was about six inches deep downward in the rotten stump and was bottomed with hypnum, rabbit’s fur, and hair, and a little dry grass. Was it a mouse-nest? or a nuthatch’s, creeper’s, or chickadee’s nest? It has a slight musky smell.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 21, 1855

The snow is turning to rain through a fine hail.   See December 14, 1859 (“Also there is sleet, which is half snow, half rain.”); March 13, 1855 ("At evening the raw, overcast day concludes with snow and hail.”) 

Pines are seen to be of a blue or misty black. See January 18, 1852 ("The pines, some of them, seen through this fine driving snow, have a bluish hue.") January 18, 1859 ("When the fog was a little thinner, so that you could see the pine woods a mile or more off, they were a distinct dark blue."); See also note to January 13, 1859 (" The woods, the pine woods, at a distance are a dark-blue color")