I had more than one coworker come in to work to warm up today. They were actually disappointed to hear we were closing tomorrow.
Like FinsToTheLeft I encountered mostly civil drivers at the lights that were out on the way in to work. On the way home however, people were being completely idiotic. I’m cutting them slack believing they’re cold, the food they bought for Christmas dinner is spoiling in the fridge, and they haven’t finished their shopping.
Here’s hoping everyone has power back by Wednesday.
I went shopping today… Most things seemed sort of normal, but some traffic lights were out, and the North Oshawa McDonalds was taking cash only–their public internet and their debit machines were down. NoFrills was working normally.The apartment building was without internet from sometime in the night to mid-afternoon.
But the trees! It was cold enough that nothing had melted, and at the end of the day, it had cleared, and every tree and bush was a chandelier, glittering in the low afternoon sun. When I went to do laundry a little while later, a bush outside the window was covered in jewels, glinting in the light of the streetlights.
As of today, there are still a lot of people affected throughout the city. The east end (The Beaches, Scarborough) seems to be the worst hit, according to this article in the Toronto Star.
Had a hard time keeping my eyes on the road this morning on the way to work; there is a lot of both deciduous and coniferous forest along my drive and it is unbelievably gorgeous. We got a very light dusting last night so absolutely everything was sparkling.
We almost had an ice storm here in the Detroit area. Technically I guess we did have one, but the freeze line ended up about 10 miles north of me. We had just enough of a barrier above 0 to keep it as 48 hours of rain, but it never iced up. A bunch of friends in are rethinking Christmas plans though, apparently the wusses think cooking and entertaining for 35 people without electricity is “impossible”
It’s been freeze your balls off cold lately in parts of the Prairies, but I’ll take it over an ice storm like this any day. I’ve been seeing pics on Facebook, I can’t believe y’all are still out driving with ice like that!
Imagine every surface coated in ice. Rather than crystallizing to snow, the water falls crystallizing into solid sheets of ice, coating every surface. It’s heavy, solid, and rigid. The sidewalks look like skating rinks. Power lines come down under its weight, since the ice, unlike snow, doesn’t fall off. Imagine half an inch of solid ice coating your car windows.
What has happened here is like a very light rain, almost like a mist that doesn’t really affect visibilty, while air temperature is a couple of degrees below 0/32. It freezes on contact with whatever it lands upon, and just keeps accumulating.
It’s not actually ice until it lands. Normally we’d just call it freezing rain, but when it continues for as long as it did this time, folks dub it an ice storm.
In an ice storm, rain falls onto surfaces and freezes, building up a transparent layer of ice on every surface. If there’s enough ice, it will weigh down tree branches and cause them to fall, often hitting cars and power lines. Roads and sidewalks become skating rinks. Everything is slippery and travel becomes very dangerous.
On the bright side, it can be fantastically gorgeous when the sun comes out afterwards. Everything glitters.
Fortunately, it takes specialized atmospheric conditions to make this happen, and thick ice accumulations are rare.
While I didn’t personally witness any branches falling, there was plenty of footage on the news. It is amazing to hear and watch. There’s a moment when you hear a crack, which itself is distorted, as the acoustics in a frozen world are different. Then the whoosh as a massive limb falls. There’s a majesty and surreal quality to seeing the entire top of a forty foot tree bow and fall. Destruction aside, it is breathtaking.
So ice storms can last for at least several days right? What happens to the city when there’s ice on the road and its dangerous to go outside? Does the place just shut down? Over here, I can’t imagine any employer demanding workers to come in when its so dangerous but I’m assuming the whole city can’t just shut down for a few days at a time during winter. But I cannot fathom going outside, driving on slick roads, getting into accidents, just to go to some job that probably has no customers until the ice melts
