A doom of ice descends upon us all. Probably, anyway. Once it rains next week and melts all of this almost two feet of snow, it will eventually get cold and freeze all of that slush and water. Normally, I’d say something about being terrified of road conditions in weather lik that, but we’ve already got roads of solid ice thanks to the city doing such a shit job at plowing everything but the arterial roadways and the fact that they’re cutting back on salt a huge amount this year. I didn’t expect them to cut back on sanding or gritting the roads as well, too, but here I am slipping and sliding around everywhere because all the salted places didn’t get salted enough to deal with the ice before the sun sets and it all refreezes, so there’s at least a little bit too much ice everywhere and an unsafe amount of it everywhere I drive on a daily basis except the highway. I honestly don’t know what the hell anyone is thinking because this seems incredibly dangerous. I mean, I’m used to seeing cars in ditches during and for a couple days after snow storms. What I don’t expect is to see new cars in ditches every single day for (as of writing this) seven days after the blizzard.
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The Weather Patterns Have A Bit Too Much “Pattern” To Them, Lately
In the past two weeks, we’ve had pretty much the same pattern of weather. Early in the week, temperatures rise and we get some rain. The rain and warmer temperatures melt all but the most packed-down, stubborn traces of all the snow that came before it. Then, before the ground has time to dry out, the temperatures drop, everything freezes, and we get a heavy snow. Two weeks ago, it was a wet, heavy snow that made travel miserable and that threatened to break the back of anyone forced to shovel it by hand. It was a damp, clinging thing that forced me to cut my daily walk short as it soaked through my clothing and left me exposed to the bitter bite of the heavy winds. Last week’s snow was light, letting itself get cast about by the raging winds so much that it was almost impossible to tell how much snow had fallen. Sections of my walk were free of snow while others where treacherous as the ice that formed from the puddles that remained the night before hid beneath blankets of snow. After each snow, there was a day of cold as it all settled in and froze before warmer temperatures returned, melted the snow, and rain finished off what remained.
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