Iceblogging

Forget about what Sherman did to the place; as for today, Atlanta, she is frozen.

The bad weather started a little after noon yesterday, a steady patter of sleet that lasted for hours, but didn’t accumulate. That turned into rain around midnight, even as the temperature was dropping. A slushy mix kept falling until around dawn. This is the result, at least around our house:

The atmosphere outside is nothing short of eerie. No traffic sounds at all, but when the wind blows, you hear the crackling of ice on the tree branches around you. It sounds like an army of squirrels nibbling away on ten thousand acorns.

Things could certainly be worse. Unlike previous ice storms, we haven’t lost power, and although my cable modem’s lifeline looks precarious:

… it hasn’t failed yet. There are certainly lots of people in worse straits than we are today. Still, the roads, including street we live on, are sheets of ice, and I really, really needed to get over to Alabama today. That’s not going to happen, unless there’s a miraculous thaw. I’d be lucky to make it to the grocery store right now (fortunately, we stocked up already).

We’re not expected to get above freezing until sometime Sunday, and the precipitation forecast for today and tonight ranges between 80 and 100 percent. And what the heck, the dog seems to enjoy it:

UPDATE: 6PM Eastern. Very steady rain now, and the temperature is dropping. We didn’t try to drive anywhere today, and watching two idiots slipping and sliding their cars up the hill going out of the neighborhood was proof we’d made the right choice (by some miracle, they didn’t hit each other, but both wound up sliding into somebody’s yard).

This is going to be a rough night, much moreso than last night. You can hear branches popping all over, and our power went out for the first time about a half hour ago. It came back in about five minutes, but I don’t expect that to last. Fortunately, tomorrow is supposed to be much warmer, but there are going to be some dark, cold, icy hours between now and then.