Arctic air visited West Marin this week, turning green hillsides white with frost, scattering random snowflakes between blasts of sleet and hail, and leaving patches of ice to slowly melt in the midday sun.

With overnight lows into the teens this week, household pipes froze and burst, gardens wilted, and residents shivered, but no weather-related emergencies were reported by county firefighters in Point Reyes Station, Tomales, or Woodacre.

County road crews have been patrolling ice-prone roads around Chileno Valley, San Geronimo Valley, Platform Bridge, Inverness, and Inverness Park since Saturday night, noted Larry Lewis, a senior road supervisor.

More remarkable than icy roads, however, was the appearance Sunday morning of scattered snow showers throughout West Marin.

In Bolinas, the 11 a.m. flurry lasted no more than 10 minutes and was preceded by two hail storms, said resident Jim Brogan.

In Inverness Park, resident Barney Clark reported two distinct flurries of snow, neither lasting more than a few minutes. It was a wet snow similar to sleet, he said, "but it was impressive."

The snowfall was much the same in Woodacre, only colder and lasting a steady half-hour, said resident Ann Jones. "It was darn cold," she added, "and kind of exciting."

And when the excitement was all over, it was still darn cold outside.

Monday morning in Point Reyes Station, pipes froze in the old shopping complex on Fourth Street, and the library closed at noon after librarians spent four chilly hours trying to fix the heater or find someone who could.

"We're sorry," said Andrea Riesenfeld, the county's administrative librarian who authorized the closure. "We don't like to close except under extreme duress. Our water also went out, and the bathroom was not available."

For gardeners, the two consecutive nights below freezing put non-native plants to the test, especially succulents like aloe and jade plants. "Succulents really took a beating," said Judith Smith of Inverness. "Mine are in great distress."

Just as vulnerable to prolonged cold spells are insect-eating birds like Townsend's Warblers and Ruby-crowned kinglets, along with all types of hummingbirds, said Dave DeSante, director of the Point Reyes Station-based Institute for Bird Populations.

DeSante said warblers and kinglets have already been seen foraging for food outside of their usual habitat in tree canopies - as they were during the cold winters of 1990 and 1991 when their local numbers dropped.

He suggested putting out suet for these birds and thawing hummingbird feeders so they all have something to eat.

"Birds have down jackets on," he explained. "What really hurts them is having their food supply wiped out."

While some birds and non-native plants have had trouble weathering the freezing temperatures, this week's low have not been too unusual for West Marin's Mediterranean climate, noted Elizabeth Finley, a master gardener for the UC Cooperative Extension Service.

"If you live in Sicily, Naples, or Greece, you'll get some really chilly nights," she said. "They, too, will get a blast of Arctic air now and then.

"My manzanita is blooming; my dwarf coyote bush is blooming; the ceanothus is doing very well," she noted. "All these plants are able to take the freezing weather."

They'd better. Forecaster Steven Freitag of the National Weather Service said this week's cold spell is a typical La Niña pattern in which a ridge of air in the Gulf of Alaska redirects the jet stream and brings Arctic air down the Pacific Coast.

Freitag predicts that dry, Arctic air will produce frosty nights for the rest of the week. Daytime temperatures are expected rise into the 50s, but residents can expect to peer through frosty windows Friday morning and find it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas - even in West Marin.

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