Perhaps it should have come as no surprise. After all, Saturday, Nov. 8, was the start of Minnesota’s firearms deer hunting season, a time when — as tradition has it — hunters are supposed to be wishing for tracking snow.

Then too, Monday, Nov. 10, was the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald during a fierce “gales of November” storm on Lake Superior.

Tuesday, Nov. 11, was the 85th anniversary of the 1940 Armistice Day blizzard, which killed 49 Minnesotans — many of them duck hunters — on a day that turned rapidly from balmy to deadly.

Perhaps wintry weather was actually overdue.

We’ve been lulled by a balmy autumn, one that has brought few early frosts, and — until now — snow showers limited to the far north.

That changed the weekend of Nov. 8-9 with a

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