And for today's challege....
I'm going to visit my mom in the hospital today. She had back surgery on Monday and is recuperating. The hospital is in Toronto, which makes it an excellent opportunity for me to visit with her although the reason for her being so close is not as lovely (although the surgery went well and she's doing fine). My mom doesn't live terribly far away. Only about 2 hours by car. However, I don't drive and the provincial Liberal government, in their idiotic wisdom, decided that cancelling the best transit service to northern communities (namely the Ontario Northlander train) was a great way to save costs from a government bleeding cash and pouring the cash they did steal out of tax-payer pockets into proven loss-generating, vanity projects (honest, there's actual studies that document how much cash was tossed into the wind with no return) like wind power generating stations. Or, better yet, paying off their campaign buddies to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars each, snowballing quickly to hundreds of millions vanishing.
But I digress.
I was going to visit her yesterday but was told on Friday of a site visit I needed to go on. Give the time of the visit and what needed to be done, I wasn't sure how long I'd been and whether it would be viable to go in the afternoon to see her. Turns out, I could've gone yesterday afternoon *sigh* as I was back at the office by noon. However, The Boy and grandbaby #1 is coming with me so I couldn't just go.
So what's the challenge today? We're getting a winter storm today and tomorrow. Snow is supposed to start at 8-ish this morning, transitioning into rain at about 10-ish with that transition being marked by ice pellets and/or freezing rain. Later tonight, it's supposed to switch back to snow. Snow/rain is expected to be heavy at times with wind gusts up to 60km/hr. We're expected to get up to 2" of snow before it switches to rain. We're projected to get between 6"-8" of rain. Then snow again with the possibility of flash freezing of previous rain to make things extra slick/dangerous.
Fortunately, we'll be using public transit for this voyage and a good part of that involves a train and subway with little actual walking around outside or using surface transport (i.e. bus). However, we will need to take a bus to get to/from the main train station and walk a little bit from the subway to the hospital. I'm not worried about me or The Boy as we're adults, but grandbaby #1 is 5 and he might have difficulties. Coming home, depending on timing may also be trying as we might hit an early rush hour as people attempt to beat the worst of the storm home.
But I digress.
I was going to visit her yesterday but was told on Friday of a site visit I needed to go on. Give the time of the visit and what needed to be done, I wasn't sure how long I'd been and whether it would be viable to go in the afternoon to see her. Turns out, I could've gone yesterday afternoon *sigh* as I was back at the office by noon. However, The Boy and grandbaby #1 is coming with me so I couldn't just go.
So what's the challenge today? We're getting a winter storm today and tomorrow. Snow is supposed to start at 8-ish this morning, transitioning into rain at about 10-ish with that transition being marked by ice pellets and/or freezing rain. Later tonight, it's supposed to switch back to snow. Snow/rain is expected to be heavy at times with wind gusts up to 60km/hr. We're expected to get up to 2" of snow before it switches to rain. We're projected to get between 6"-8" of rain. Then snow again with the possibility of flash freezing of previous rain to make things extra slick/dangerous.
Fortunately, we'll be using public transit for this voyage and a good part of that involves a train and subway with little actual walking around outside or using surface transport (i.e. bus). However, we will need to take a bus to get to/from the main train station and walk a little bit from the subway to the hospital. I'm not worried about me or The Boy as we're adults, but grandbaby #1 is 5 and he might have difficulties. Coming home, depending on timing may also be trying as we might hit an early rush hour as people attempt to beat the worst of the storm home.