Mutant snowflakes

Winter is here. Officially. Starting this morning. After sunrise, the temperature suddenly plummeted, and the snow started. These were mutant snowflakes. Big, wet, did I say BIG? I saw snowflakes 2 to 3 INCHES across! This was just weird!

So here's a picture of the neighborhood this morning as the snow was falling:

...And looking the other way:

...And then later in the morning when I came down from the office for a cup of coffee, I saw that our beautiful maple tree had broken under the weight of all of the heavy wet snow, trapped on the leaves that normally would have fallen by now:

Sadly, I had to pull out the chainsaw and amputate a couple of large branches from the tree. I was able to knock the wet snow off of the other branches and they sprang back up to proper position. But I'm afraid that I'll have to take this tree out before the spring comes; I detected too much old damage that I'd not seen before :(