I Hate Ice

Don't get me wrong, frozen forms of precipitation are good for some things especially when this frozen precipitation falls in the form of big fluffy flakes. Snow is wonderful because without it we wouldn't be able to enjoy skiing, snowmen, snow caves (something I have YET to be able to do), snow cones, or snow angels. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the large form of frozen precipitation; hail. This is a bit more dangerous as anything larger than dimes can cause some serious problems. Yes, ask any cotton or corn farmer in the Llano Estacado or the portion of the High Plains in the Panhandles and you will hear them say dime size hail can ruin a crop through the seedling stages. Then you get the big end of hail, the softball to holy-crap-it-is-punching-holes-in-the-roof which doesn't care about whether the material under it's fall is man-made or a part of nature. Typically, the monstrous hail falls with severe thunderstorms as strong updrafts are needed to support large hailstone formation which is a whole different realm of mother nature...

However, there is tiny range of frozen precipitation that I personally cannot stand. This often arrives in forms varying from a fine mist/fog/drizzle that occurs with temperatures below freezing, or when the temperatures profiles in the atmosphere favors sleet (properly coded as ice pellets), and the worst of all: freezing rain. My personal dislike for these hellacious forms of precipitation rise from the fact that there is little a city can do to lessen the impacts from various problems that arise (slick roadways, downed power lines, etc. since this accumulates and cannot be plowed away like snow) and it turns my normally easy 5 minute drive to work into a 15 minute, stress-inducing, profanity laced ordeal. Likewise, any form of winter weather warning/advisory that goes out induces a sense of mass hysteria among the residents and thus a run on local grocery stores ensues. It is as if people believe they will run out of bread and milk (and for those of the college age in this town - beer) in the 3 days of wintry precipitation and they have to hoard as much as they can. Store shelves and coolers are picked clean of the essentials and the stress and profanity move indoors as impatient people try to rush through the line in order to get home before the arrival of the end-of-the-world, cataclysmic, biblical end times winter weather.

Sidebar - In my town, a fair amount of people have "so called" 4x4/four-wheel drive/all-wheel drive vehicles and the majority of these are in the pickup/truck form. I say "so called" because 90% of these vehicles are in reality 2-wheel drive thanks to open differentials, another 8% are "2.5" wheel drive thanks to limited slip diffs, with another 1% some combination of open/limited slip/locked differentials yielding a "3" wheel drive. Finally rounding out the group is the 1% that have "true" four-wheel drive where both the front and rear differentials are "locked". (Note: all percentages are wild a$$ guesses). My pickup right now is a 2.5 wheel drive (open front, limited slip rear) while the Jeep is a true 4x4, locked front and rear but I digress.

My point is that via personal observation, the people around here assume 4x4/four-wheel/all-wheel drive means "damn the road conditions, I can drive the speed limit because I'm in a 4x4!". This lack of understanding in their vehicle plus an apparent tendency for people to generally disregard traffic rules (and common sense) yields a portion of the population who are a greater danger to the rest of the residents. The drive in both yesterday and this morning was spent watching out for everyone else and avoiding those fishtailing down the major roads while I plugged along at what I felt was a personally safe pace (25 in a 45 isn't too bad...). However, I was mildly humored with the expressions on the faces of people who had experienced temporary loss of vehicular control...some of whom probably needed to go home and change their pants.

Unfortunately, the hardest part happens while I am at work. Forecasting wintry precipitation in this neck-of-the-woods is part skill but majority luck. A difference in 100 miles can mean the difference between the fluffy stuff or the scrape half an inch of ice off the windshield stuff. In some cases (such as Tuesday), a 25 mile distance can mean the difference between flurries and accumulating sleet. Although my gut instinct is that the majority of the population could care less about our forecasts, there is at least a small minority that does check our forecasts and it is for those people I am trying to figure out what can happen. Walking into the forecast desk Monday was nothing but utter stress and chaos; phone ringing, hand analysis to do, a quick glance at the incoming forecast models, and then a decision on what kind of product to issue 3 hours into the shift to start the aforementioned mass hysteria in the general public. When I walked out the door at 4:30 pm, I ached from the stress of trying to forecast frozen hell falling from the sky and from trying to see the microscale features in the data that could make or break the forecast.

I can handle stress; convective severe weather events are a yearly reminder of that. Yeah I might have a few more gray hairs mixed in with whatever hasn't decided to fall out, I might develop a stomach ulcer or two from drinking too much caffeine (a la 2007 severe weather season in the Top 'o Tejas) during a prolonged period of active weather, and I might pass out for 24 hours when I need to catch up on sleep. However, the stress during convective events is of a different variety than in this icy hell. Severe weather usually lasts for a brief window whereas wintry precipitation can continue for days on end. Give me 12 hours of tornadoes, hail, lightning, winds, and flooding compared to 72 hours of sub-freezing, whiteout inducing, slip and sliding crap.

Give me 3 feet of snow and not this eigth-inch of ice that coats every surface. Let me plow through powdery bliss in my Jeep and not play a game of ice capade chicken on the roads. Did I mention it is going to be 55 degrees today??? All my troubles will literally melt away...