SHEEz...it's weather out there...

"They're saying it's gonna get bad..." The  

Fabulous Feathermaye said.  "Of course, they said

Traffic and Freeways Frozen
to a standstill...This is I-35E
folks

that last week and we got zippo."

I nodded, looking at weather underground; the wundermap was all blue, purple, green and yellow.  "You're right, darlin', it'll probably miss us completely...again."

Wrong!

Now, you should understand that we've been in North and East Texas long enough to have spent a couple of winters since leaving the constant, almost perma-warm of Houston and the Gulf coast.

We had seen a couple of snows, albeit short-lived, such as they were.  With Feathermaye originally from Michigan, and Yours Truly growing up in the Carolina foothills and mountains, well...we thought we had seen bad weather...Probably more than most...We had been through hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and had to drive to Michigan for her dad's funeral in the midst of winter...So, yeah, we know bad weather.

One thing everyone should know about Texas:

don't count on the weather being predictable...If they say it's going to do X-Y-Z two days from now, it's usually going to do A-B-C instead.

This time, however, they called it.  One reporter had said: "The DFW metroplex should expect to wake up Friday morning entombed in ice..."

I almost let out a guffaw, at that one.  Just eight days before they were going nuts about a similar storm and how it was going to pelt the metroplex and screw up the roads.  We got bupkus out of that one.

Last Thursday, The Fabulous Feathermaye and Yours Truly watched all day from our warm little office here where we manage a storage property.  The wundermap glowed purple and blue to the west; it streamed from southwest to northwest as it moved closer, pushed by a Canadian/Arctic blast with sub-freezing temps. 

"I don't think this is going to miss us this time, kiddo..." I said to my young wife.  

We got a corporate email with instructions to put 'ice melt' and sand down over foot traffic areas.  "Looks like you need to make a run to Lowes or Home Depot." Feathermaye told me.

Our working agreement is that she does most of the 'office' work (files, collection calls, the lion-share of rental contracts) while I take care of the 'outside' duties (cleaning vacant storage units, bank runs and yes: running down to the hardware store for 'ice melt'.)

It was fluctuating between 33 and 31 degrees as the rain started, mixed with sleet or 'ice pellets' as they've apparently started to call it now.  Starbuck (The international dog of wonder) was ready to go.  It's also part of my duties to take the dog with me on bank runs and so-forth, she was in her purple sweater and all set to go, probably wondering why I had waited so long to get her out on her daily ride.

The windshield was wet as we pulled up to the commercial window at the bank; this is Starbuck's favorite part of the day, they give out dog cookies at the bank, you see...

The girls at the bank all know how Starbuck is named for the show "BattleStar Gallactica"

She's named for Lt. CMDR Starbuck
from Battlestar Galactica, not for
the coffee franchise...

(the newer version in which Starbuck's character is a girl).  Once she had her cookie ration, we headed for Lowes.  Of course, Lowes was all out of 'ice melt' so I headed a few blocks over to Home Depot.  The sleet/rain/ice mix was coming down pretty good by now, not sticking, but the temps were getting lower. I was damned cold walking into the store.

"No sir, we're all outta 'ice melt' and rock salt." The girl just inside Home Depot told me.  "We had a bunch of pallet loads and it was all bought out in less than an hour..."

The guy that walked in right behind me groaned before I could.

"We got a bunch of that 'play sand' left over..." She added with half a smile.  "Better hurry on up and grab some.  The faucet covers are just yonder..." She pointed at the other freeze protection I was looking for: a giant bin of Styrofoam covers for outside faucets.  

I grabbed 100 pounds worth of sand and got out of there.  It was really starting to come down now, traffic was getting sloppy, people were going into panic mode and I wanted to get off the road--period.

We had already made a run to Sam's the night before, so we were ready to go, as far as provisions went.  Of course, there are always going to be things you didn't think about...

 The long winter's sleep began just as the real frozen stuff began to come down.  Feathermaye and Yours Truly had been out, off and on, all through the early night to get a look and monitor the situation.  By ten that night, it was starting to sleet in earnest.  Everything was battened down, so we turned in.

At one in the morning, Feathermaye woke me.  It was silent in the house, but for the sound of a 'woodwick' candle burning on her side of the room.  At first I couldn't place the sound. "Is that sleet hitting the windows?"

"No, honey, it's the candle.  The power went out, it's getting pretty bad out there."

"Great...that's wonderful..." I said with flatline humor.  We had the heat running at around 76 with all the water trickling so the pipes here in the main building wouldn't explode.  It was still quite warm as I dosed back to sleep; I even kicked a leg out from under the covers because I had become too warm.

I always wake up around six in the morning; I

don't even set the clock for it, I just always wake up then.  This is cool because I always need to check that the gate is working so we don't have tenants banging on the doors to get on the property.  

When I walked out into the office and looked, I

was stunned.  The gate was frozen shut, and the parking lot/front drive was a solid sheet of ice.  The ice sheet continued into the property; it covered the whole place.  Even if someone could get inside, they would never be able to negotiate their way around without ramming into something in our parking storage, or one of the buildings.

Feathermaye came up behind me and caught her breath. "Sheeze...it's weather out there!"

I tried the gate override, forgetting for a moment that we didn't have power.  No matter though, even if the power had been on, the damn thing was frozen solid; I could see the thick, shimmering ice formations coating it, coating the rollers and the chain that moved it open and closed.  It wasn't going to budge, even if I got out there and hand-cranked it.

Besides, the ice was so widespread, covering everything, to the point where footing was impossible--to put it mildly.


We bundled up quickly, the walls and floor were still holding some of last night's heat, but the thermostats read 60, and they were only going to fall as outside it was in the mid-twenties, and frozen precipitation was still

blowing around.

Without power, we had no phones--except cells--and of course, no internet.  No internet is hard for Feathermaye, as many of you know, she lives, vicariously-speaking, on the world wide web.  Most of our spare time is occupied with the net, so we set about with as many busy things as we could, knowing that we were trapped inside the property (our car was in the garage and I wasn't about to dare

Grits & Eggs No Power Breakfast

sliding around in it) and we had to take extra caution even standing outside, where I started up the grill to make some gluten free breakfast (grits and eggs, boiled and poached in a cast iron Dutch oven).

We had just enough battery power on our devices to do a little reading, and even to watch a DVD or two as we waited, hoping, that the power would return before too long.

With our phones, we learned that thousands upon thousands were without power.  I guessed, based on our experience with hurricane Ike, that we would bet power back first, since we sit, as most storage properties

do, on the main grid, right along the interstate.  

Sure enough, around 3:00 that afternoon, the Christmas tree blinked on, then the blower on the heating system kicked back on.  We gave out a mild cheer that startled the dog.

With freezing to death no longer a concern, we followed the news channels.  Besides the power loss all across the metroplex, the roads were even worse.  Even though winter indeed does come to the DFW area, it's usually not frequent enough for the local governments to invest too heavily in snow plows.  And, with the precipitation a good three to six inches of ice, rather than snow, even the rocksalt/sand that the trucks plaster over the roads did little to take the ice away.  Besides, it was only going to get colder for the weekend, right on into Monday and Tuesday of next week!

There are a lot of bridges in the metroplex, miles upon miles of freeway with mix-master type interchanges; bridges that curve up and over and around and span hundreds of yards were caked with ice, and peppered with abandoned cars, left by those lacking enough sense to let it go.  The metroplex was down, frozen, out-of-order, until further notice.

By late Sunday afternoon, we were finally able to get the gate open, but the lot was still completely overladen with a hard sheet of thick ice.  We couldn't allow anyone on, and even had to go as far as explain, multiple times to a few hard-heads, that they would not be able to drive inside the lot, that they would get stuck, and that we were not about to house them while they were stuck, and that if they damaged anything, it was on them.  This last

message seemed to finally stick, and thankfully, we only had to explain this a few handfuls of times.

We caught up on a lot of binge watching: Sons of Anarchy season six and The Walking Dead fit nicely into the weekend, along with a few good films we squeezed in as well.  We feasted on homemade, gluten free soups, grilled steaks and chops and put our slippers through their paces.

The poor dog just didn't understand why we weren't taking her out into the big open field across the street, nor could she figure out why there wasn't a street anymore, just a lot of this white, slippery stuff, that looked like snow, but was as solid as concrete.  

By Tuesday, I needed to make a run over to Plano to pick up some Advocare supplies.  We live off of Spark, and love their wellness products like Probiotics and Clear Mood, not to mention the benefits I get from their Muscle Gain--that I take for all the lost tissue I suffered with my PMR.

"I'll take the toll road..." I said.  "It should be good and clear by now."

The news had been reporting how all the bridges and overpasses had problems with what they were calling "CobbleStone Ice"...It's that hard refrozen slush that builds up and becomes not only treacherously slippery, but so jagged and rough that it can actually puncture tires.  As you can see from the video, Starbuck and I did not have an easy time of it, going the twelve miles to Plano took over three hours!

As I write this blog, it is now Wednesday, and the temps are finally going to break the freezing mark (it's supposed to hit forty!) and most of the ice should finally dissipate.

Feathermaye was angry last night and got all

over somebody on line.  People were actually chuckling about our wintery mess.  It seemed funny to a few Yankees that a metropolitan area had to close down for nearly five days just because of a few inches of ice.  She fired back hotly: How dare you find humor in the suffering of others!  This type of weather event is not normal for those living here.  We don't make fun of you when you are having a heat wave and people are dying because of a few days of over ninety degrees, just because we are used to 107, it's just not funny!  How dare you make fun of another's fear! Shame on you...

You get the idea. 

We were grateful that we have a job that only has a six-second commute--we walk from the kitchen into the office.  After all the clean up, I'm finally able to put words down again.  Plus, I had plenty of time to think about the other blogs I've still to write.