I was talking to a friend in New York who asked, “Is it snowing?”

“No!” I said, “It’s beautiful now that the rain has stopped. The hills are gorgeous.”

A few minutes later the hail started falling, glazing the deck with rough translucence, quite like an old-fashioned doughnut with heavy white icing. A little later, the sky cleared again and, as you can see, a rainbow appeared over East Mountain. I’m glad to have an excuse for showing what the Berkshire Hills look like in this November of global warming, glowing in the late afternoon sun.