The joys of winter,

and Kim's favorite weather*, the bastard.

So far the ice has been not too bad in the Oklahoma City area: icy in some spots, less so in others on the way to work this morning. I went out about nine to scrape my windows and discovered that it was thundering like a spring storm and sleeting. A bit south & east of here the freezing rain was heavier at the time, more stuff moved through during the day. Right now they're still saying more off & on light freezing rain through tomorrow, heavier in some areas. I think the big thing saving this area is that the temperature is just at or a couple of degrees below freezing; if it were, say, 28 or below we'd be screwed. As is, a lot has melted after landing on the roads, and the trees right here just have a thin coat of ice.

By the way, just in case any of the people involved read this, I'd like to pass on something you seem to have forgotten since last winter(assuming you learned it then):
DON'T HIT THE BRAKES WHEN YOU'RE GOING UP AN ICY HILL. You have this thing called 'momentum' when you start up, and if you use the brakes, you slow down. And get stuck. And EVERYBODY BEHIND YOU gets stuck, too.

There. Isn't that simple?

I'm hoping for the best out of this, which would be nasty roads but no huge power outages. I hate having no electricity anytime, winter being right up there with mid-summer for the worst times.

After thinking about things to do after last years' storm, I realized a while back that that little two-burner unit I use for bluing will work very nicely in the house for cooking if need be, and I've got one full and one mostly-full bottle that'll run it or the grill outside. Also on the 'hoping I don't need them' list: a gallon of lamp oil for the two lamps and lots of candles, half a dozen small propane bottles for the lantern, and several good wool blankets. And half a dozen big bottles of water and a case of small bottles. I've been saving bleach bottles for emergency water storage, and may fill a few more when I get home. Just in case. And food, including a case of MREs.

I think the worst weather 'event' (as the weather weenies like to put it) I've been through was in the early 70's. I got to sit up late to watch the weather in winter(that part of the state you start paying attention early) and the forecast was for "flurries, we don't think there will be much accumulation." Dad looked out the door and then called me over. Turned on his Kel-Light and shined it out front, and it was showing so hard you could barely see the trees about twenty feet from the door; he announced that it was the hardest flurry he'd ever seen.

Next morning I woke up and it was bright in the room, and my first thought was "I'm late for school!" Jumped up, looked out the window and "Oh no I'm not!" Dad's patrol car was parked at the curb, and the only thing showing was the bubble on top. The fence in the back yard was now six inches high and the dogs were wandering around. In fields around town with no drifts there was an even 36" of snow. The official record says it was only a couple of counties west of us that got that much, but I will state they're wrong. Absolutely nothing was moving, and the National Guard was called out to do helicopter drops of hay to livestock, as on most farms you couldn't even get the barn doors open, let alone a tractor or truck out. It took three days for the county to get enough graders out and working to clear streets and roads in and around Medford. Powerlines generally stayed up, not many outages, and pretty much all the farms outside of the town gas lines had their own propane or butane tanks for heat. First time I'd ever actually been able to dig a tunnel in snow.

Barring the weather weenies blowing it bigtime on conditions, this shouldn't be nearly as bad as the ice storm last year, or the one a couple of years before that: that one put three inches of ice on much of the northwest 1/4 of the state. Power lines weren't just broken, hundreds of poles broke under the stress of the ice and wind. Friend of mine had no power for almost a month.

*Of course, according to a friend in Fort Worth it was 50 and raining there today.