Ice, Ice Baby

The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium.

--Norbet Platt


Here's a new revelation brought on by some deep thinking. Winter weather in the South. When something happens weather wise things shut down. People run for the grocery store. Knew that. We had a couple of scares regarding the weather and I watched and, yes, I laughed. Last Saturday we had snow. They shut down the church for Sunday and cancelled evening events. I drove to Durham for the Duke Basketball game. Didn't think twice about it, it was barely snowing. Fast forward to the last couple of days. Yesterday the kids were still on Winter break but apparently other school districts weren't. It's been raining off and on and the temperature is hovering at 33 degrees during the day and 20 or below at night. I was supposed to go to the Church to break down the alter flowers into smaller arrangments and make Nursing Home visits with one other member. She calls just before we're leaving and says she looked outside and saw ice on the street so we needed to postpone to today. I looked out and "saw" wet pavement and thought hmmmmm. Still thinking to myself that I've driven on much much worse than that to get to work that was never cancelled and it took lots of ice for the schools to call a delay in Ohio.

Later that night I'm watching the news and one of the school districts was giving a press conference. Apparently they thought they hadn't needed to delay school and rolled the buses. They were getting TORN APART by angry parents. I mean raked over the coals. Even by the news reporter a little bit. Furious calls had been made after parents saw the buses "skidding" and the school district had to call all the buses and tell them to pull over until a new call told them they could go again. I'm telling you these people were FURIOUS! Whoa ... these people take icy conditions very seriously.

So dh comes home and he tells me he was sliding a lot trying to get to work and I start paying attention a little more. I pick up the paper today and read there was actually 40+ car accidents during rush hour.

When I really started reading the article on the accidents I had a revelation. Ice is maybe different here. Icy roads in Ohio came with snow most times and in quantities where the height was elevated. It was not necessarily clear, more white. You slowed down. Sometimes you had patches of what was labelled Black Ice.

Black Ice: thin, new ice that forms on fresh water or dew covered surfaces; it is common on roadways during the fall and early winter and appears "black" because of its transparency.

Yesterday it was Black Ice - everywhere and definately on all bridges and overpasses and exits. Not just patches but large quantities. The rain here hasn't really been steady. It's been spitting and very spotty. Is it possible I had looked out the door yesterday while my friend was on the phone and did't "see" the ice that she saw? More than probably!

Today the phone rang at 6:00 am. I was expecting it to. It's still spitting moisture. I'm not even going to call it rain anymore. The call was the automatic school notification system. Two hour delay. This morning, based on my new revelation, a school delay sounds like a good plan.