Thursday, February 13, 2014

Snowfall!

I've lived in Charlotte, NC since 1980. And since I've lived here I've never seen it snow for three days in a row. I could even say "four days" on a technicality because we had a brief period of snow flurries on Monday evening (but no accumulation). The serious stuff started on Tuesday with a three-inch snowfall. Then yesterday's (official) seven-inch storm, and now more today (they're predicting another 3 inches of snow).

They pulled us in early from the street yesterday because of treacherous conditions. And today they didn't even send us out. The problem is that the roads are solid sheets of ice, our vehicles are puny two-wheel drives, and the City of Charlotte only plows a few main roads and leaves the side streets to languish. So it would have been unsafe to send the vehicles out today.

Now I'm home early to watch the snow falling in grand, pale sheets from the brilliant, icy skies.

I can dig it.


This was actually taken last night as I was getting ready to drive Carole to work. The snow made things so bright that the automatic flash on the camera did not go off.

This morning at work. The parking lot was an ice rink. This was just before the next band of heavy snowfall hit.

Our street as I turned in.
My tracks atop the frozen snow. We had heavy snow, then sleet, then freezing rain, and now more snow.

The drive home through Winter Storm Pax (2014).
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6 comments:

  1. Vicki10:40 PM

    It looks pristine and so deliciously cold...

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  2. James Robert Smith11:08 PM

    It was beautiful. However...three days of this stuff and I'm actually tired of it. They say it'll be warming up into the 70s in a few days. So it goes in the south of the USA.

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  3. dogboy4438:51 AM

    At least you didn't have your wife sitting next to you freaking out about every other driver on the road. I was ready to push her out the door.

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  4. stan6:44 PM

    I heard that it is the first time in 135+ years of record-keeping that Charlotte received 3 straight days of an inch or more of snow.
    It was wonderful, but yes I got tired of it. I measured about 9 inches total on my backyard picnic table near Mint Hill. Surely we would've received much more than a foot if not for the sleet.

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  5. MarkGelbart8:59 AM

    We had an ice storm in Augusta. It knocked out power for over 120,000 people. Planters Electric said our power wouldn't be fixed for 3-5 days. !#!# incompetent Gomer Pyles.

    I'm staying at my mom's house. Her power was only out for 25 hours.

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  6. James Robert Smith3:51 PM

    @Stan: I did not know that. I do know that back in the 60s there was a month during which it snowed in Charlotte every weekend for three weeks in a row.

    @Mark M: I did drive with my wife in the snow, and she did freak out a few times.

    @Mark G: Damn! Ice storms are the WORST! The worst! We lost our power for over two weeks during Hurricane Hugo. At the time, we were quite actually the LAST neighborhood in Charlotte to have power restored.

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