On Sat, 20 Dec 2008, Ronn! Blankenship wrote:
At 10:13 AM Saturday 12/20/2008, Bruce Bostwick wrote:
On Dec 20, 2008, at 10:07 AM, Julia Thompson wrote:
If the forecasts are correct by this time tomorrow I will need to dig
out the winter gear again . . . though at least the week of
almost-constant rain will be ending . . .
Aaaaand -- according to my local forecast, a cold front is coming
through
sometime between this afternoon and tomorrow morning.
I wish it would just make up its mind what temperature it's going to
be....
Julia
Still in the 60s here, though I've already closed
the windows. Expected to be in the upper 30s by
morning, and maybe as low as 20 (°F, for Alberto,
et. al.) Monday or Tuesday morning . . .
In the 30s today.
And the day or two of fog we get after each cold front is only
entertaining up to a point.
Fog? Yep, we've been having that, too . . .
Most of the driving I do first thing in the morning is on rural roads,
just 1 block on anything you could call a "highway" and a little more than
a mile on something that's neither highway nor rural in character. People
are relatively sane with their driving, but it's kind of weird to see the
"Highway Intersection 1000'", have the road curve so the actual distance
to the closest bit of highway is significantly less than that, and being
*barely* able to see the rise of the main part of the highway to go *over*
the road.
Then the next morning, there was comparable but not identical fog. I had
fun comparing the two mornings in the same spots as I went along. (Stuff
south of the highway was denser, in general, on the second morning, while
the stuff north of it was less dense the second morning.)
The effect an actual "dense fog" has on
people's driving behavior in Texas has to be seen to be believed.
On the roads you're on, Bruce, yes. On the roads I was on, people mostly
just moderated their speed and didn't do anything stupid. :)
The worst fog I have ever seen was one night
between Windsor and Toronto, where literally all
that was visible was a few feet of the road right
in front of the car. And all the natives were flying by at 70 or 75 mph . . .
(They can mostly deal with rain, up to a point. Snow or ice, forget
it. :)
I suspect that it's worse in Utah the first time
it snows. Apparently over the summer everyone
forgets how to drive in snow. At least here it's
rare enough that people treat it as unusual and
take more care. Also, when snow is likely
schools cancel class and other things shut down
so there are fewer people trying to get through
it (though for the women who go into labor during
the storm and need to get to the hospital on the top of the hill . . . )
And to tie-in to another thread: that is one of
the times people around here rely on their TV-band radios . . .
We don't get ice or snow very often at all, but when we do, it tends to
shut stuff down rather badly.
If I thought I'd be able to stop at the end of my street when it ices, I
could manage to get around -- but it's partly that I know you need to be
extra, extra cautious for that, and I'm good at skid recovery, as long as
I manage to stay on the road. (Hence the potential problem at the end of
my street.)
I also found out on Friday that I still remember how to walk on ice -- I
was walking down a hallway with enough water on the floor to make it slick
in spots, and I just automatically went into "ice-walking" mode to reduce
the chances of my slipping. That was weird. Then again, a lot about
Friday was weird. (I may reconsider the "hit all 3 kids' holiday parties
at school" thing next year, for one thing.)
Julia
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