Ice Ice Baby
My South Dakota relatives are probably incredulous watching winter news from the south. My cousin noted on December 23, 2013: “Good morning from probably the coldest place in the USA. We were a balmy -22 degrees this morning with wind chill of -40 degrees. Aberdeen, SD.”
Here’s a pic of his drive to work last month:
Those War of the Worlds aliens are hovering pretty close.
Having grown up in Phoenix I’m spoiled. It rains about 7 times a year. Some of those days it rains 3 inches in an hour. Another hour or two and the water is all gone, sun shining. During that one hour several vehicles will disappear in intersections filled with five feet of water, but you only have to deal with it for an hour or two. And odds are good that you won’t be one of the few cars swallowed. Then, back to sunshine and birdies and puffy clouds floating around.
This photo, purported to be real (but really, who can you trust? Me, or Them?), can be viewed here, which is a site about running in Arizona.
You know, in case you get to live there.
Jerk.
Meanwhile most of the US is being repeatedly pounded by Snowmaggedon and Icemaggedon. There is not a loaf of bread to be found in a five-county area and I don’t care because I know where the beer is, nice and frosty cold. It took my friends hours to get to work today, here in Memfo, because we are suffering under a catastrophic ice storm. I repeat: Catastrophic. Ice. Storm.
This is why we cannot have nice toys. I actually slipped on that ice. Yes, I did. I slipped on 1/32″ of ice.
Thus, ice as the South experiences it:
TotalTrafficMem (which would be more properly named TotalTrafficMayhem) has tweeted at least 60 incidents of Bumper Cars this morning. Many probably looked like this (below, 64 & Davies). We don’t have the equipment, Memphis has a couple of salt trucks which manage to cover major intersections and the loop. We also don’t have experience driving in weather, and the precipitation was so light you simply cannot see it.
I’m renting a car that looks eerily like the little blue Bumper Car up there, and while I’ve got ShuBootAh on reserve in the back of my closet I have no desire to ever enlist her services again, so I’m staying in for the day. I’m not driving or running anywhere, and I’m going to spend some time trying to memorize this weather to pull out next July.
