COVID On Ice

It's the worst possible forecast you can have at this time - a threat of significant (you never want to hear that word in a weather forecast!) icing in the middle of a pandemic.

The current forecast for my area hints at sleet with some light freezing rain for tonight into early tomorrow, which could produce a light glaze on bare outdoor surfaces - like streets and highways.  A more potent wintry mix delivering even more icing - possibly icing of catastrophic proportions - for Tuesday - has been in the forecast, but more recent reports seem to be backing away from this idea and suggesting plain rain that doesn't freeze on contact.  (Kentucky and Virginia haven't been so lucky, having both gotten sever ice storms already.)

So, even as the COVID virus is killing all of us, we have to deal with a winter Armageddon.  The endless cycle of storms should last another week and shut down after that, but the many rounds of bad winter weather we've been having these past couple of weeks only remind me why February has always been my least favorite month.

Beware of Maya

The winter storm The Weather Channel has named for the Hindi word for "illusion" is no illusion, it's the real thing.  It's bringing snow, ice and rain to my area tomorrow after having wreaked havoc elsewhere, and even though the ice my area is expected to get is more likely to be sleet - rain that freezes in midair - than rain that freezes the moment it comes into contact with whatever it touches, like tree limbs and power lines, it's still going to be a nasty storm for us.  So, even though it won't be a bona fide ice storm, a 49th power outage for my block, counting from November 2009, can't be ruled out entirely.

I've had an easy winter, and the idea that would remain easy was just an illusion; this is Mother Nature's way of having everything turn out even, especially after it was over sixty degrees Fahrenheit  early last week.

Stick around. I may be back soon.

Snow and Ice and Rain, Oh My!

As you've probably been hearing all week, a dangerous winter storm bringing every form of precipitation known to humankind has been marching across the 48 contiguous United States.  The storm, which The Weather Channel inexplicably decided to name after Paul Simon's eldest son (weather forecasters who don't work for The Weather Channel don't name winter storms, and they go  to great lengths not to use the names The Weather Channel assigns to them), is bringing snow, rain,. sleet, and freezing rain to just about anywhere. California got hit with rain and snow already.  The Great Plains have been walloped with snow and the Midwest has gotten snow and ice as well.  In the Northeast, we've been awaiting our turn, which is coming some time after I publish this. 

Ice has been the main concern for my immediate area, with threats of significant icing in parts of New Jersey north and west of New York City.  Icing occurs when warm air aloft causes snow to melt into raindrops over frozen ground and then refreeze on contact - freezing rain.  That's different from sleet, where melted snow refreezes into pellets before it hits the ground.  Earlier forecasts for my area called for snow to change to rain and for ground-level temperatures to be cold enough to allow rain to freeze on the ground and create ice heavy enough to bring down trees . . . and power lines.  This in an area where I have had to endure no fewer than 48 outages in the past decade.  At this writing, however, more recent forecasts call for snow to change to rain where I live and not freeze on the ground, as temperatures will be rising through the night and in the overnight hours.  So I think my neighborhood will be spared icing.    

I think we will be spared icing because after the precipitation ends by midday tomorrow, the temperature will start to fall, falling to 32 degrees Fahrenheit around 3 P.M., falling to about 24 after sunset, falling to 13 by midnight and finally bottoming out at 6 at 9 A.M. Monday.  And another forecast says that freezing rain in my area is still a possibility for tonight.  But the falling temperatures throughout Sunday afternoon and evening are the primary concerns here, because they will cause a flash freezing of any collected water that hasn't evaporated from the winds, which will also be picking up.  High wind speed plus freezing water on power lines and trees equal disaster.  

While I'm a little more confident than I was yesterday that my block will be speared a power outage, I'm not taking any chances as far as my blogs are concerned.  I have written a blog entry and scheduled it to be published on Tuesday, January 22, but I don't expect to write anything else here if a blackout occurs.  Maybe not even if a blackout doesn't occur; I have other and more important things to do online this coming week.  Also, I have rescheduled posts on my beautiful-women picture blog so that, after a post today,  there will not be a new post there until Friday.

As for my non-online life, I have plans to encase food in Styrofoam boxes and store them in a cold place if my power does go out, and I may have to leave the water running to prevent freezing pipes.  But whatever happens, it's actually supposed to get up to the mid-forties by Wednesday.

I hope to be back in a timely matter.  Stay tuned.     

An Ice Weekend?

We just got a few inches of snow where I live.  In the meantime, I've seen some weather reports indicating rain and freezing rain for the Martin Luther King holiday coming up next weekend . . . specifically, next Sunday night into Monday morning.  It's expected to be light - so far - and it should hopefully warm up to the point where it's only plain rain.  But this forecast is still a week out.  An ice storm isn't out ofthe question.  Remember, a week before Hurricane Sandy, that storm was excepted to miss us entirely.  

So now I wait to see if we in fact will experience our first electrical outage of 2017, or whether we get through it and still hold out hope for our first outage-free calendar year since 2008 (yeah, right).  Also, even if we do escape ice next weekend, there's another threat coming late next week.

Why do I still write about possible ice storms despite the fact that they never seem to materialize?  I figure that if I keep writing about it, then nothing will happen.  Hey, it's worked so far!

In the meantime, this week is supposed to be warm after a bitterly cold start.