Winter Wonderland

This morning, we awoke not to 5-9″ of snow, but to 3-4″ of snow… on top of a ton of ice.

Yesterday, it iced and sleeted for almost 9 hours. I’ve never seen sleet like that — pellets the size of BBs, and loads of ’em. Being out in that was like someone shooting at you. The news described it as the ground being covered with snowcone ice, and that seemed pretty accurate. There was about 2-3″ of this ice on the ground before we switched back to rain again around 10pm. Then we froze again, and the snows came.

So, if you’re keeping score at home: 2-3″ sleet, rain that then froze on top of that, and then 3-4″ snow as icing for this cake.

We’re supposed to have strong winds just behind this front, and that’ll start knocking down even more trees and taking out more power. Ameren’s already reporting over 450,000 folks without power this morning, and I fully expect that number to go up. We’ve been lucky, and have only had a couple of brief interruptions during the night.

Given all that, Beck and I decided to stay here and avoid the mess. It’s been cool to watch though, and has been absolutely gorgeous.