Snow. In Texas. In MARCH! O_o
So....it was a pretty busy weekend, and I didn't have time to post over this freakishness until now but...
People, my town got over *6 inches* of snow in less than *3 hours*. In March. In Texas.
Not quite as uncommon an occurrence as snowfall in the Sahara, but not too far off, either.
At any rate, I've always considered myself a moderately intelligent person. All evidence to the contrary last Thursday. Right around the time they went around telling us that the office was closing and we could leave, I looked outside the window, saw a *blizzard* (not exaggerating by much here, people) and realized I hadn't checked the weather and didn't have a coat.
Yeah. Short sleeves. Jeans. No coat, no gloves, no hat. 30mph sustained wind from the north and snow blowing so hard I couldn't see the back of the parking lot.
I kind of joked uneasily with my co-workers about it, but wasn't really that worried. Then I went outside. It was that wet, heavy, clingy snow that we *never* get here. You know, the kind that makes awesome snowballs and sticks to anything it touches until it melts? Including skin and hair? By the time I got to the car and got in, I was so cold, I honestly think I could have taken a knife and cut myself and I wouldn't have felt a thing. I looked in the rearview mirror, and my hair was *white* with snow that was embedded and just clumped into ice if I tried to scrape it out. What was worse, there was well over 3 inches of snow on the car by then and it wasn't coming off without some assistance, which meant getting back out and scraping snow in short sleeves, with my clothes and hair soaked through from the initial trip to the car.
When I got back in I didn't feel much of anything at all. I checked the mirror and was white for reasons other than the snow, and my lips had this faint blue tinge, *totally* freaking me out! I cranked the heater up and sat there, even though the snow was coming down faster than the defroster and wipers could keep up with it. After a few minutes, feeling started coming back in my fingers and they just *ACHED*. Forget freaking pins and needles, they hurt all the way down to the bone, so that I just wanted to cry, and I thought it would be pretty fucking pathetic to get frostbite in the parking lot of my office building!
When everything finally stopped hurting, I pulled out and got into the line of cars. And sat. And sat. And sat. And looked at my fuel gauge. And had heart failure, because I was under a quarter of a tank. Of course, that morning when it was 55 degrees, I had thought I'd get gas when I got off, and the station was only a quarter-mile away, but it might as well have been 100 miles, for all the good it did me. 800 people work in my building and there's one road out that opens onto the same two lane FM road that the local college sits on. In addition, the major highway was closed due to accidents by this point and traffic was being rerouted along the FM road. Everything was gridlocked. Tried my cell phone. No signal. I panicked. I damned near had a moment of true hysteria. If I ran out of gas, I had no one to call, no cell phone even if I *did* have someone, no coat so I couldn't get out and walk anywhere in that, and gridlocked traffic as far as the eye could see with insane Texans dealing with freak weather and on the verge of road rage, due to sitting in traffic for hours.
All this in addition to insanely slick roads and seeing untold numbers of cars in the ditch.
Well, I made it to the gas station (on fumes) and then made it home 3 hours and 30 minutes after I left (I live 12 minutes away).
Holy crap, I'll take my 110 degree summers *any* freaking day of the year to that shit.
Moria~