(no subject)
Today a strange storm came through, and I discovered Catster, an "excuse for sheer ridiculousness." My cat Frankie is in there somewhere.
Winters here are mild, but we do get some odd weather once in a while. Last night was cold. Frost gathered on the ground and the grass and earth grew crunchy. Today dawned bright and cold, but it clouded up. Around noon, a curiously noisy light rain began to fall. I stepped outside to investigate and found that the noise was ice chips hitting foliage, ground, and buildings. The ice was clear and invisible, it looked like ordinary rain. O-O-O-K. Wow. Last year at this time we had an overnight ice storm that turned the back yard into a luminous icicle-coated dreamland but froze our toilet pipes (no flushing for a day) and broke numerous trees. Now what?
This time the precipitation didn't freeze to surfaces on contact, but it did cover the ground lightly and obviously. We took a walk, and it was like an alien planet. The ice fell with a rising and falling rustling hiss, and its consistency varied from clear chips to bouncy white hail to regular old floating snow. Regular rain was mixed in there somewhere. We didn't dare drive anywhere, since we weren't confident of what it might do next, even though the air was supposed to warm up over the course of the day and evening. The roads near our house were crunchy with a layer of fallen ice-stuff, but it never did solidify into a burdening sheet. Our thermometer is still hovering around 30 degrees Fahrenheit at 8:30 pm and some sort of drizzle is still falling. If it doesn't warm up there may be a mess tomorrow morning.
Winters here are mild, but we do get some odd weather once in a while. Last night was cold. Frost gathered on the ground and the grass and earth grew crunchy. Today dawned bright and cold, but it clouded up. Around noon, a curiously noisy light rain began to fall. I stepped outside to investigate and found that the noise was ice chips hitting foliage, ground, and buildings. The ice was clear and invisible, it looked like ordinary rain. O-O-O-K. Wow. Last year at this time we had an overnight ice storm that turned the back yard into a luminous icicle-coated dreamland but froze our toilet pipes (no flushing for a day) and broke numerous trees. Now what?
This time the precipitation didn't freeze to surfaces on contact, but it did cover the ground lightly and obviously. We took a walk, and it was like an alien planet. The ice fell with a rising and falling rustling hiss, and its consistency varied from clear chips to bouncy white hail to regular old floating snow. Regular rain was mixed in there somewhere. We didn't dare drive anywhere, since we weren't confident of what it might do next, even though the air was supposed to warm up over the course of the day and evening. The roads near our house were crunchy with a layer of fallen ice-stuff, but it never did solidify into a burdening sheet. Our thermometer is still hovering around 30 degrees Fahrenheit at 8:30 pm and some sort of drizzle is still falling. If it doesn't warm up there may be a mess tomorrow morning.