Friday, December 6, 2013

Snowpocalypse

An eerie silence envelopes East Mountain and the surrounding landscape. There's nary a sound except for the occasional barking of a dog or the joyful exclamation a child down below as he or she takes a first step into the altered terrain. Nothing is moving; any sound from moving traffic in the center of town is non existent. Many are calling it a snowpocalypse, And even as the final flakes flutter down from a brightening sky, just about everyone is rejoicing in the fact that the predicted ice storm gave us snow instead; at least, for those of us in the mountains and northward. People living in the Arkansas River Valley, which lies about an hour's drive south on the interstate, were not so lucky however.

The freezing rain began at around 8:00 am yesterday morning, and it quickly put an icy glace on streets, sidewalks and tree branches. Fortunately, the rain changed over sleet within a couple of hours and it continued to come down for the rest of the day and well into the night. Sleet can be a strange phenomenon. It creates a music all of its own as the listener is treated to a  virtual symphony as thousands upon thousands of ice pellets reverberate against sprawling tree branches, a ground cover of newly fallen leaves and the roofs of houses. For those who wanted to listen, last night provided us with a grand symphony! Eventually, the sleet changed over to a dry snow, thereby allaying any fear of downed trees and power outages.

Down in the river valley, things were much less pleasant. According to the last report I heard, more than 30,000 customers are without power; this, with bitter cold temperatures on the way. Last night the news people were reporting that some in the valley can expect to be without electricity for at least a week. Ice storms can inflict a lot of damage in a short amount of time and it can take quite awhile to recover.

A short while ago I measured the amount of snow accumulated here on East Mountain. It appears that we got about six inches (15 cm). Is that all? You might be asking. Yes, that's all but six inches of snow, especially on top of ice and sleet, pretty much immobolizes us for awhile. It will likely be two or three days before I'll be able to get off this mountain; that is, unless I want to walk. Snow plows are almost nonexistent here. We just wait for the sun to come back out and melt things, more or less.




Anyway, another dangerous storm has passed and hopefully, things will get restored to normal very quickly down south, where they got most of the ice. Oh, and don't mind my ghoulish friend here! He's really happy that the ice caused no damage to his haunts; he just doesn't look it at the moment. It seems that the snow made him look something like a cone head. He was a bit angry that I caught him looking so silly. Ghouls after all, are supposed to be scary.


10 comments:

  1. I'm SO glad you avoided an ice storm, after all! What beautiful pics! I love looking at snow, I just don't care for being IN it. Thanks for letting us know you are okay.

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    1. Thanks for checking back in Lucretia! I'm not a big fan of snow either. It's very picturesque when it first falls, but I'm not crazy about being in it either. Unfortunately, Mr. Gray surprised me by deciding to take a long stroll in it and has been gone since this morning. It's about 3:00 pm now. He usually disappears for the day in normal weather--but with all this snow and cold? He's a long-haired cat with a good layer of padding though, so I'm sure he'll be back when it's time to eat.

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  2. Well, it does look awfully pretty, Nightwind! I'm glad you missed the worst of the ice storm, though. :o)

    It was -37C out on the highway this morning - and that without the windchill factored in. I bought myself a new pair of Sorel's that are good to -75C, so I'm semi-prepared for it. As if a person could ever be prepared for that bone-chilling kind of cold. LOL

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    1. It should be about -18 C. here tonight. That's unusually cold for us here, but not unheard of. But -37? I can't imagine cold like that! But wait a munute! Didn't this arctic front dip down from Alberta? Thanks for sharing, neighbor, but you really didn't have to this time! We're not as prepared for it you are. Still, I'm glad we dodged the ice storm, that could have made rhungs much worse.

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  3. 6 inches of snow is very impressive to me! My only experience of snow was a small amount that fell during one Christmas while I was living in London. It was a revelation to me. I wasn't expecting how silent it was compared with noisy rainfall. I have no concept of what freezing rain or an ice storm is.

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    1. Count your blessings, Little Gothic Horrors, because while some people do like the snow, nobody likes freezing rain; and it seems to threaten us all too often here in the Mid South.

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  4. So glad that the ice storm missed you. Here on Thursday we had 2 months` worth of rain in 6 hours and gale force winds, this combined with a Spring tide caused massive floods along the East coast, in the lower parts of Whitby some shops had 4 feet of water inside them.

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  5. I heard about that storm, App'y. I was wondering how much Whitby was affected by it. I know that you all had another bad one back in October too.

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  7. this is a terribly long-winded way of saying "it has snowed". you're no meteorologist, buck up your ideas.

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