This is winter is not fun anymore. I love the days with cold and sunshine and snow but no wind or ice. And we've had bucketloads of that. :-) But wind chill is real and when that wind blows and the humidity is high, it can get really cold. The trick with weather right now is, the sun shines, the temperatures warm during the day, so the snow starts to melt. Then, before all the melted snow can evaporate, the sun sets and the temperatures drop below freezing and then you have ice. So the walk home can get treacherous. In Dallas, we have black ice on the roads, but here they get black ice on the sidewalks. The sidewalks are made of asphalt and it really is black ice.
Monday night the conditions were right (and I don't know what the exact combination was) and now all the snow banks glisten. It looks like cupcake icing is spread over the top. It's actually a thin layer of ice, so it's a little dangerous, but it's kinda cool-looking. When you crunch through the top layer, it's regular snow underneath. MRM says you can walk on it and she loves to play on top of it when it's like that. I haven't been home before sunset all week, so I haven't had a chance to do that, but I'm looking forward to that. She likes to lie down on it and slide around. Sounds fun!
Speaking of ice, there's a freezing rain warning for tonight. (You wondered when I was going to get around to addressing the title of this posting, didn't you?) Yuck. That's what winters are like in Dallas. I'm not looking forward to this or the walk to school tomorrow when the sidewalks are covered in more ice. But at least the walk is very short and even when it's bitter cold, it's not miserable because it's over before I know it.
Check out the official notice of the warning:
URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE GRAY ME
342 PM EDT WED MAR 21 2007
...LIGHT FREEZING RAIN TO FALL ACROSS MUCH OF MAINE AND NEW
HAMPSHIRE LATE TONIGHT...
.A WARM FRONT WILL LIFT ACROSS THE REGION TONIGHT. WHILE ONLY
LIGHT PRECIPITATION IS EXPECTED...MUCH OF THIS WILL FALL AS
FREEZING RAIN...RESULTING IN SLIPPERY ROADWAYS.
PRECIPITATION MAY BEGIN AS A SNOW OR SLEET...BUT WILL QUICKLY
CHANGE OVER TO FREEZING RAIN. THE FREEZING RAIN WILL CONTINUE
UNTIL EARLY THURSDAY MORNING...WHEN TEMPERATURES GRADUALLY RISE
ABOVE FREEZING...BRINGING AN END TO THE HAZARD. HOWEVER...FREEZING
RAIN WILL LINGER IN SHELTERED MOUNTAIN VALLEYS INTO THURSDAY
MORNING.
