Oklahoma ice storm

The big ice storm is over and was mostly a bust (thank goodness). People in the eastern part of the state got hit worse than we did, but here in the center of the state it was just a couple of days of icky weather.

The precipitation fell as ice pellets and then freezing rain, which produced a very strange frozen substance that looks like snow but is rock hard. It isn't slippery, so you can run on it without sinking in at all.






Dean and the kids spent an hour running around the back yard on Saturday (too cold for me) and there are NO FOOTPRINTS. Very peculiar.

When I went to chisel out the car this morning I found out just how solid this stuff was. Despite 20 minutes of pre-warming, I had to use the round end of the scraper as an ice pick, to break off chunks of the ice/snow mix that encased my wipers.

The main streets are fine, but neighborhoods are very slick since there has been no sand, no scraping, no anything in the last four 1/2 days. Parking lots are awful, too -- so you can drive to most major destinations in town but you don't want to go into the lot. And they'll stay that way for days and days, since business owners don't do anything to make it better. They don't shovel sidewalks, they don't clear lots, or put down sand or deicer or anything.

But we had a nice weekend. We stayed home, drank a lot of hot chocolate, played games, watched movies, drew pictures -- really just an ordinary weekend, with extra hot chocolate.