As I’m writing this column (on Tuesday, April 4), we seem to be in the middle of our monsoon season. By my count, using figures set out in newspaper weather reports, we’ve received over 1.4 inches of precipitation since the middle of March.

Somewhere around 4 a. m., on Monday, April 3, that moisture, to my surprise, turned to a heavy wet snow. If weather proceeded in an orderly manner, the snow wo...