May surprise

"The sounds coming through our bedroom windows were ominous. We recognized the 'crack-crash' punctuating the almost tangible silence as the noise of snapping, falling limbs. Two decades of New England woodland living had accustomed my wife and me to the winter ice storms and clinging wet snows that 'trim' the pine trees. But this was early May in Massachusetts --- a time of lilacs and apple blossoms.''

-- Robert C. Cowen, on a May snowfall in The American Land (1979)

(The reference is to the bizarre May 9, 1977 snowstorm that affected much of southern New England.)