Blow, blow, thou winter wind

Right now in Chicago with its subzero temperatures, you would think we were living through a nuclear winter to hear the media tell it. How refreshing to read this paean to winter from Peter Hitchens (admittedly not in Chicago):

Sometimes it brings glorious clear air, so that you can see further than at any other time of year. Sometimes it comes with mysterious fogs. I am still sad that I shall never see again the overpowering sight of an express steam engine coming into a station one foggy winter dusk in a small Dartmoor town, entirely surrounded by its own cloud of steam glowing pink, red and gold.

When it freezes lakes and ponds, and hardens the earth, it makes sound travel quite differently, so that church bells across a long distance have a special hollow echo to them that (like the bells themselves, only more so) is uniquely English.