Ice Storm of Death [Winter has Arrived]
 

Well, Brian, I would say that you may have the right idea, risking an increased chance of skin cancer to avoid the perils that arise at 0 degrees Centigrade. It may be the fact that the power was out for 3 hours earlier, it may be the fact that a 500 pound ice-encased tree branch is perched precariously close and vertically to the powerlines that feed into the house, and to the Honda Civic parked below, but I am suddenly wishing for a warmer locale.

With the crack and thunder of falling timber all around everytime the wind gusts up, it is certainly in sharp contrast to yesterday's weather, where it was a nice 70 degrees. Yet today, the sky spat forth pellets of stinging ice, when it wasn't pouring down rain too impaitent to freeze in the clouds, instead opting to freeze after it's plummet on whatever surface it clung to. Yes, it's a good old fashioned ice storm, which the scizofrenic weather patterns of middle America decided to produce to really usher in that wintery feeling.

Having an ice storm sucks. Having an ice storm that lasts 24 hours is just God's cruel joke. I blame Nelly for drawing divinity's ire towards St. Louis.

So, I say to those of you in more tropic locales, damn you, I hope you get cursed with hurricanes. Or, barring that, plauges of exotic deadly insects.

So, let us all share in this cursing, and grip about the not so charming weather that accompanies the late and early months of any given year.

Here I thought the weather was bad in Michigan...but that just SUCKS!

The thing that amazes me most about this storm actually has nothing to do with it. As I'm sure Bravefencer will agree people around here drive like they're talking on the phone, eating dinner, and shoving their heads up their asses all at the same time. Multiply this by 5 when it's rains, by 10 when it sleets and by a bazillion when it snows. When you have all three coming down at the same time (which happened more than once yesterday) as well as lighting and thunder with the snow in some places, you can imagine the roads being pretty scary. So imagine my surprise when people were actually driving like they had sanity and sobriety at the same time. But that aside yeah this storm sucked hard; out by my house we've got about and inch and a half of sleet turned to ice and about and an inch of snow above that. Glee!

You must in in the Ontario area, or are a lot of places getting hit by an ice storm of death? Either way, yeah. I went to bed around 1:30am EST, outside it was perhaps a little damp from rain earlier in the day. I wake up at 10:30am to The Day After Tomorrow.

I've noticed similar phenomena up along my neck of the woods. The really odd thing is that slightly bad weather like a bit of rain or a snowflake here and there will set off the CRAZAY MOTHERFUCKER switch in your average Virginia/Maryland-Axis driver's deformed, reptilian brain, to the point that you get quadruple your usual contingent of people failing to understand turn-signals, trying to merge lanes directly into your car, riding right up on your goddamn bumper with their brights in your eyes when there's a half-mile of empty lane directly to your left, and driving with four cars across four lines of highway all at the same speed of like fifteen fucking miles under the speed limit.

And yet somehow every once in a while when actual, shitty weather hits, people smarten up and drive like they know what they're doing. I dunno, maybe the sleet knocks the stupid out of 'em, or something.

Zombie Jesus, you think you boys and girls have it bad, come see what's happening down in Kansas. Earlier this week, we were enjoying a crisp temperature at the mid- to upper-60s, just warm enough to walk somewhere.

Wednesday afternoon we had freezing rain. Schools had to call in their buses early to get all of the kids out without making a huge mess, but most ended up being late, which just gums up the works.

On Thursday, most of Kansas City shut down for the sake of clearing away the new ice. The thing you have to understand is that there is a curse that everyone in Kansas is in on. Weathermen, in regards to winter weather, are always 100% wrong. Whatever they predict will happen will not happen; in fact, the opposite will take place. Weathermen predicted that the rain would pass over quickly and without much effect on the workings of schools and churches and such. Thursday proved them wrong. However, Kansas City had a dedicated crew of people who clear the road. They work pretty quickly so that things can get working again the next day.

It would've worked. Had we not gotten over a foot of snow Thursday afternoon. Schools were cancelled for Friday at around 2:20 pm, which is the earliest the districts have ever come to a decision regarding snow days.

So by now most of that snow is cleared away, but there's still a lot of fresh snow to play in, and the kids got away with a four-day weekend.

...What part of Kansas City were you talking about? I've been off school today and yesterday, but I could've easily gone. The streets were mostly fine, I shoveled our driveway, we could pretty much go anywhere so long as it wasn't I-435 where that semi jack-knifed.

It was the same here, in fact, it was the same storm system that hit us. Only problem was is that the freezing rain lasted from thursday morning to probably about 3 AM friday morning. So, you got more snow, but we got more freezing rain, and unfortunately, the freezing rain is a lot more damaging. Outside there is a 20 foot long treebranch literally being held up (vertically) by the powerline that runs to my house. Everything here has to have an inch and a half, 2 inches of solid ice coating it right now. It's hard to find a tree that hasn't lost some major branches to the sheer weight.

2.4 million people are without power across Missouri and Southern Illinois. Including my sister, who's staying here for right now (we do somehow still hae power, though we did have a 3 hour outage).

But, the sun just came out here for a few minutes, and I tell you, the sight of the sun shining an refracting through all that ice is amazingly beautiful.

[jackass]Well... im in the middle of summer down here now, its sweet sweet summer with the coldest day being 28Cº

So, really, sucks to be y'all [/jackass]

Multiple ZING!

It's been snowy here, but nothing like you guys have described. Just a LOT of wind. And since everyone walks everywhere on campus, and the wind is very strong, every few moments, you see a big group of college students stumbling as the wind tries to blow them over.