Hothlanta 2011 - Day 1

It certainly looks more like Hoth out there than my beloved Hot-lanta. (I take no credit for the term Hothlanta, BTW! I snitched it from a friend's tweet.) And yes, I am suspecting there will be more than one day of Hothlanta posts, given the weather forecast. Anyone have a tauntaun we can borrow?

They had been threatening snow for several days, but it finally started falling after 9PM Sunday night. Just before 11PM, it looked like this:



A mere 3 hours later, it looked like this! (I know, my eskimo snow-acclimated friends are wondering what the fuss is about, but that's a lot of snow in not much time for down here.)



I wish I had taken a picture as soon as I got up Monday morning at 7:30, but I didn't think to. Not long after, the freezing rain started falling, which did melt or knock off some of the snow on the front porch hand rail. At 9:45 AM, it looked like this:



Note that there are no tire tracks in the snow. No one on our end of the neighborhood had even attempted to leave the house before 10 AM. We had something like 5 inches (13cm) of snow, give or take. Schools were closed, and it was unsafe to drive anywhere. DH and Luke spent most of the morning playing with the Wii. What was I doing? Working! Most of the time, working from home is really nice and convenient, and I do consider it a privelage. However, on days like this, I am still expected to work. There's no reason not to! So while most everyone else got an unexpected holiday, I was sending emails and sitting on conference calls. It's not even like it was a quiet day, since most everyone I work with also has the capability to work from home. We all put in a full day's work. No fair! LOL

The freezing rain finally stopped in early afternoon, at which point, our back yard looked like this. How pristine!



Well we can't have that, now can we? LOL



I fielded work phone calls outside while Luke and DH played. These were taken around 4PM.



By then, a few folks had made it up the hill, so there were some tire tracks, but that's about it. You could also see where several people had tried to back out of their driveways, gotten as far as the road, then just pulled right back in! DH was able to practically ski down the hill by keeping his sneakers in the iced over tracks. (Rumor has it that my uncle who lives about 30 minutes away actually did ski down the hill near his house!)



The current layers of the street go something like this: asphalt, ice, fluffy snow, crunchy snow, ice. Temps aren't supposed to get above freezing before Wednesday, and they'll drop down into the 20s tonight, which means anything liquid will freeze. Remember, these roads were not treated, and there is no such thing as plows for neighborhoods around here. The only roads that *might* be clear are the interstates, but based on the news, the weather was too much for even those. There just aren't enough trucks to keep up.

Right now, I would guess that Luke will be out of school a minimum of 2 days, and I actually think 3 is more likely. Any more than that depends on whether or not it gets above freezing for any useful length of time on Wednesday. At the moment, that is not in the forecast, which means more days home with Luke while trying to work. As long as DH is home to keep him entertained, things are okay. Once he has to go back to work? Yeah, that's when things will get.... interesting.

Currently feeling: snowy