Classes Cancelled (Again)!

Earlier this week we were hit with what weather.com called 'freezing rain.' Freezing rain is not fun. I can do rain and I can do snow, but freezing rain, not so much.

It's cold. It hurts. It's impossible to walk in.

Due to this freezing rain, classes beginning after 2:30 on Tuesday afternoon were cancelled, as well as classes earlier than 11:30 on Wednesday.

As I sat in my apartment on Tuesday evening, I didn't see what all the hullabaloo was about. It wasn't even raining (yet). However, when I woke up the next morning, it had started. Still, things didn't look too terrible. I headed out to the gym with an umbrella thinking, no big deal.

Wrong. The freezing rain really was freezing. And the seemingly clear pathways were not so clear after all; the freezing rain had created dangerous black ice. I skated to the gym in my sneaks.

Later in the day I witnessed several wipeouts. I would have laughed, but I knew how much it had probably hurt (and that I could be hitting the ground any moment as well).

Even though the freezing rain was a bit miserable, it was still beautiful. Even the tiniest branches on the trees were all encased in what looked like glass. The snow appeared polished and was glittering from the layer of ice that had formed on its surface.

Walking by Eddie's this afternoon, I was tempted to skate across it, it looked so smooth. Courtney and I did just that freshman year, but on Murphy Field. The half foot of snow and a 32 below temperature after the freezing rain that year had created a perfectly solid ice skating rink. Unfortunately, Eddie's has at least three feet of snow and definitely wouldn't hold up my attempts.

 Frozen trees. 

Bit blurry (due to my camera phone), but you

can see the ice on the branches. 

 Couldn't believe these bent trees!

The ice on the branches proved to be too heavy for the trees to stand straight.

Close-up. 

I didn't mind the ice storm, but I prefer snow. The weather is supposed to warm up during the next few days, which is bad. It's bad because warm weather during the day melts the snow. Then, at night, the temperature drops below 32 and freezes all that melted snow, creating more black ice. It's time to get shoes with spikes.