For those who live on pavement, a wet snow and a steady rain have the same effect. They both mean wet sidewalks for a day or two and streams running toward the storm drains. A diversified farmer understand it differently. In spring, both the snow and the rain create mud, but mud after a rain results in a much faster drydown. The rain creates the opportunity for the soil to start firming up. Snow has the opposite effect, keeping everything soft and seeming to prolong the frost-thaw forever. This makes all the difference, not just in getting into the fields for spring planting, but well before that in keeping livestock relatively dry and healthy and in being able to get manure hauled out without having to put it on top of snow, which no good farmer wants to do.
So while the temperatures beckon us to come, experience counsels caution. Patience must be the practice. Too early on the soil creates damage that will last the year.
