It's stressful to live in what is essentially a southern city with occasional northern weather. We don't get a lot of snow, but we get some every year. Usually 1-5 inches at a time, sometimes as much as 9. I saw 18 inches in 24 hours when I was a kid here in St. Louis, but that was a long time ago.
The worst is the layer-cake phenomenon here. You get a couple inches of snow. Then it warms up enough to start to melt, just in time for night to hit and drop us into freezing again--creating a sheet of ice on the streets and most surfaces. If you're lucky, then it'll snow two days later, and then perhaps some freezing rain or sleet on top of that. By the time you coast down my street trying to get somewhere you have to be, it's a skating rink and ski slope all in one. And our street doesn't get plowed--not that it doesn't get plowed until later, until after the big streets are plowed. It doesn't get plowed. It's a gentle glide to a busy street that is clear pretty soon after the snow or freezing rain is dealt with--so cars are going the speed limit as you drift out into traffic.
It makes me glad I can do things on foot if I have to.
But it's pretty.
New Year's Eve was creepy warm. Highs in the 60s and the tornado sirens went off. We went to the basement because Fiona is a bit concerned about storms. The girls set up tents and played their DS's while I did some filing and Mike listened to the weather radio. The "squall line" passed us without incident, just heavy rain. But a tornado touched down west of us and north of us. So it was prudent to hide.
