The first real cold usually reaches Loveland in October, off the benchland below Mariana Butte — one clear still night that leaves frost on every windshield west of Wilson. Royal Turf Landscape & Irrigation watches for that night, because after it the season belongs to the plow. Driveways get opened, sidewalks and entry steps get taken down to bare surface, and the shaded stretches — the north wall, the low spot at the foot of the drive — get de-iced before they can glaze over. A chinook can carry off a foot of snow in an afternoon and hand back a sheet of ice by supper, so the work is as much about what melts as what falls. The measure of it is simple: you step outside, and the ground holds you.