Two weeks in advance, They said it was coming. They’re getting pretty dang good at this. It’s the Meteorological They, and if They tell you it’s going to ice up at 3pm a week from now, best get your groceries in by 2:30.
They’re good at this because they’ve got fat computers and custody of a whole lot of little arrows. They watch the arrows move around like sheep before a border collie and they have a good grip on where they’re going to go next. They’re hardly ever wrong anymore, and they weren’t this time. The weather arrows were lined up for what is technically called a doozy.
Snow. Ice. Frigid temperatures.
When I first moved here, it rained so much that I anticipated some whopper snow storms, but they don’t happen often. Apparently our rain comes from the Pacific Ocean where the air is relatively warm, but our cold comes from the Arctic, usually without remembering to bring any water with it. We live near the airport so we get it fresh before it heads down valley and has a chance to reconsider.
Most winters it stays in the thirties and forties and some years it never gets much below freezing. The trouble comes when the air gets to the freezing point and then wobbles around it in a panic, and that’s when we get confused rain. Ice, snow, rain, and every state in between, all at once or in layers, and there’s no driving in it. The snow in cold climates is as grippy as gecko feet. This ain’t that.
This doozy was not going to sneak up on anyone. The temperature was going to dance around forty degrees for a day and then drop off a cliff. It would start snowing at 3pm on Friday, continue into Saturday, and fetch up around eleven degrees, at which point ice would come out of the sky.
Ice! At eleven degrees there shouldn’t be any confusion about the state of water at all. I scoffed. But They were right.
And these weren’t sissy Celsius degrees ticking down in predictable decimal increments. These were big meaty Fahrenheit degrees thunking Germanically down like boots in a parade. Eleven degrees isn’t even a temperature we have here. We have to import it from the Yukon, packed in diced lemming pellets.
It got down to fifteen when the little flakes gave way to ice. The icon in the forecast is very sharp, like diamonds or shards of glass. I watched it for hours. It didn’t freeze up around the tree branches like a fairyland. It didn’t pile up on the pavement like a rink. It just disappeared. Hours into it, there was no ice visible anywhere. The only thing I can think of is that all those sharp diamond ends simply sliced straight into the soil without piling up on top. The excitable weather reporter on Nematode News described it as pure carnage. Breathlessly, because nematodes don’t have lungs.
So. We have snow, tree-flattening wind, disappearing ice, and an imported temperature. Soon, a sheet of ice will roll out of the sky fully formed like dough off a pasta machine. Next up: snot and prickles. And when it warms to the mid-twenties, water will develop gelatinous properties and bloop gently through the trees.
There’s no shovel for what we get. We just hunker down inside with a stack of books until the crap gives up trying to get a rise out of us and goes away.
A long time ago, when I was a child here in Delaware, we had snow that measured in FEET. Then, a few decades ago, snow was infrequent. Lately, I had been telling people, “Aw… what are you buying a snow shovel for? It’s never going to snow again here!”
I was sadly mistaken.
My snow boots have been languishing in the back of my closet for the last few years. No need to bring them out. It’s never going to snow again. So, what did it do over Monday night? It snowed. AND iced. “They” predicted 1 – 3 inches. We got 3. They are also predicting 1 – 3 inches on Friday. And what with the below freezing temperatures, it will all just have a… um… snowball effect.
I will be at home except for when Paul can drive me out in his truck. I have become so unaccustomed to driving in snow, that it scares the bejeebers out of me. It’s not supposed to get over freezing until the middle of next week. Here, nothing is within walking distance (not that I’d even walk with all this ice on the ground!) so one must have car. Our “mass transit system” here is a joke. So Paul will be Driving Ms. Crazy until the thaw.
Some kinds of snow are a snap to drive in. Not ours. I got housebound today too. I’m truly sorry you’re not in a walking neighborhood. I think that has to be a requirement for me. Let’s see: within 1-1/2 blocks of me are a fabric store, a boxing gym, an essential oils emporium, a shoe store, two coffee shops, two Mexican restaurants and a bodega, a donut shop, a pilates studio, a card shop, an Iraqi restaurant, two art galleries, a pizza joint, an Ethiopian restaurant. The grocery store and drug store are seven blocks away, though.
Wait. TWO card shops and a jeweler also. I’m sure I’m forgetting something.
Now they’re predicting 3 – 6 inches on Friday. *whimpers*
Here in NJ it’s pretty much the same story the last few years. This time we too got the predicted 1-3 inches of snow and ice. It’s been years since we had a real snowstorm that was measured in feet as was common at one time in the winter here.
I know! Right?! I was a toddler back then, but I still have pictures of me playing in the snow with it WAY above my head. I saw kids building snowmen and ringing people’s doorbells to shovel snow yesterday. A novelty for me anymore. (No, I wasn’t driving. Paul was. He’ll be my chauffeur for a while, apparently.)
I could swear we got a foot or two in Arlington Virginia, too.
We used to call these ‘silver thaws’, back in the Pleistocene era, when forecasting was ‘kinda looks like snow today’. After 25 years in Montana, I’d forgotten what a pain in the butt ice is. I’m used to snow, don’t mind it, with a 4wd truck it was never an issue in a town that only plowed the main streets, and that sometimes. Now, I don’t care to walk the 50 feet to my son’s house. I did prepare, just had some leftover pesto pasta for lunch, and am hunkered down with old movies.
On Tuesday, a friend back in Butte called, said it was -41 that morning, school’s announced there’d be no outside recess. Also his truck was reluctant to start.
I guess this isn’t so bad.
MINUS 41??!! Holy shit! I told Paul earlier today that I could understand why people move to Florida… but we couldn’t. There are awful pests out there. No… not the ginormous roaches or the alligators! The republicans! Ick!
On a side note, you seem like a fellow foodie! Food is one of the greatest joys in life! IF it’s prepared right.
Yeah, guess I’m a ‘foodie’, with some caveats. I’ve had lots of times where something I’m fixing does not meet expectations, mine, because I never use a recipe, in terms of measuring. Some of this, some of that, let’s try this stuff this time. Often it’s very good, sometimes….
I did a chicken noodle soup earlier in the week that turned out well, chicken from one I’d baked previously, carrots, onions, brussel sprouts, garlic and a bit of a frozen Thai chili I had in the freezer. Noodles added towards the end. The Thai chili kicked it up a notch.
Oh, man. The food you have mentioned now and before sound wonderful! Improv works! Sometimes I find stuff that needs to be used up, put it together with a few other things, and boom! A meal! My favorite condiment is probably Vietnamese Fish Sauce (Nuoc Nam). It seems to make everything taste better.
I keep thinking about how my mom and her family had to go out to the windbreak to use the potty in the North Dakota winters. Well, there were chamber pots.
This’ll be Texas next month. January’s a dry run to remind us of 2021 and the big tree decimation of 2023 (yes, I’m fully aware that means only 10% of the trees were killed in the ice storm. That seems about right.)
Were they frozen out or knocked down?
They were coated in ice so heavy the limbs snapped and the trees crumbled. It was astonishing to me how much dead, black, mushy shrubbery sprang forth in fresh green sprouts come Spring. A good many of the trees survived to, albeit several feet (and limbs) shorter.
With all that usual description Murr gave above, I thought I’d mention that I did indeed leave the house today, on two occasions. The first, after heading out to the “rink” in my snow boots, intending to assist a neighbor by turning off their water (a burst pipe was flowing pretty good, I was told), before leaving my gate I gingerly returned to my house, put on my micro spikes, grabbed my hiking poles and started anew. That combo was perfect, excellent traction, the only way to fly in this frozen land. My neighbor answered the door with half her face covered by a blood soaked cloth. Turns out someone hit her in the face with a shovel while trying to uncover the ice trapped water meter in the alley. I guess two shovels were operating at the same time—didn’t really get any details. I cramponed back to my garage, returned with a monkey wrench and was able to shut the water main. I think bleeding neighbor went to the hospital after I left.
The second outing, same gear, was a walk to the grocery store for Hershey kisses. Wife claimed she had to have them instead of chocolate chips for peanut butter cookies. Despite possessing the kisses, said Wife did not get around to making the cookies. Wife did manage to complete a jigsaw puzzle and re-line her skirt.
It was a good day and good to get out and return safely. Ice can be nice if you have the proper gear.
Well I certainly enjoyed your day for you.
Your hummingbird looks fiercely indignant about that “freezey skid stuff” on his dinner table.
We spent the weekend playing musical hummingbird feeders: thawed ones out, frozen ones in.
And scattering seed since the seed tubes required climbing a ladder. Octogenarians and ice-clad ladders are not a good combination
They are not! Seriously, do you have to get out a ladder every time you refill the feeders? That’s devotion. I did enjoy throwing peanuts for the crows and watching them land and skid a foot.
My friends 40 miles east of Eugene have been silent for days now and I think they must be ice covered. The Lane County electric provider says it may be Jan. 26th before power is restored. They have a generator and a woodstove, but the internet and phone lines must be down, as I haven’t heard from them since Saturday. Worried about trees falling on their house.
There used to be a time when no one knew what happened to anybody, but now that we usually get minute-to-minute updates, our stress level has increased.
But I lost my Wordle buddy due to the outage! 🙁
On a better note, they got their power back yesterday afternoon…
I was born in Buffalo and am not far from there now. I have been spared this blast which is a good thing since my plow guy is on the injured list. I did some shoveling and went to get my mail but apparently the post office can no longer deal with storms (maybe wind or hail). I have to say snow was much more fun when I was younger.
I’m in NJ. I was born in the early 60s. I remember some really cold winters, daytime temps in single digits, a few times in negative territory. But then there were warm winters too. We did seem to have more snow.
We had some blizzards in the late 70s that dumped two feet or so. The great entertainment was throwing our Lab’s ball out the door and watching her fly out only to encounter the snow. I don’t think we saw the ball again until the thaw. And someone, probably my dad tossed the cat out into it. Ah, sadism and parenting…
We’ve had some real momzers of storm within the last twenty years, one that dumped three feet. I looked out at one point and my truck was gone, buried by drifts. It was a little truck, but still!
And we’ve had cold winters and decent amounts of snow in recent years.
Last year it snowed once. There were two inches on my car and nowhere else. A fine dusting here and there.
We used to have flurries. Not so much this winter. We had one in December that left a coating that melted away in minutes. Mostly I just see out of the corner if my eye a flake or two that might be there. And might not.
This last storm I got enough to shovel, which would have been okay if it wasn’t wet and cold rain coming down. I had the joy of cleaning up my paralyzed friend’s driveway after amateurs left mounds of ice all over it.
Today we’re to have more of it. The estimate keeps rising. Three to seven was the most recent.
Yeehah
Our ice came back after it was supposed to be over. NOW it’s supposed to be over. We’ll see.
After spending lo so many winters in Portland and southern Oregon, we finally retired. Where we are in Arizona is cold right now (to us) at 30s in the morning and 60s in the afternoon. While I know that sounds like bragging, it’s not. I remember living in NW Portland, walking to work in the ice and hoping to god the telephone pole on the corner would brace my sliding down a parking lot to W Burnside. While all others depending on chained-up mass transit were late, they always said, Mari will be there — she walks. That is, I came close to dying most ice days. Or the time my mom and I shopped at Washington Square and came out to a sheet of ice. Slid to the car — and she was no ice skater! No one had chains to fit the Toyota so we chad to wait for any bus that went downtown. 5 hrs later we made it. Oh, the need for an in-bus potty! Then transfer to another bus to NW Portland. Then, to have my mother as a houseguest for a week. Not the best situation, but the big thaw finally came and we got my car and I once again had my privacy. What a long week!
You just reminded me of the employee parking lot at our station. It was on a south-north slant, with the cars parked east-west. When we came back into the station one icy day, all the employee cars were wedged together at the bottom of the lot.