h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

We had an ice storm here this week. I've never seen one of those before - where I come from, rain falls as snow when it gets cold. A huge mass of very cold Arctic air came down from the north, and the preceeding front passed through here at around 3pm on Monday, pushing temperatures down by 30F in as many hours, and even further by nightime. Tuesday was very cold (for these parts), barely making it above freezing all day, but that evening a Pacific front came in from the west and brought some precipitation with it. Instead of falling as snow, it fell as almost feezing rain, which froze on contact with anything it touched, turning streets into skating rinks, and covering trees and power lines with extra pounds of weight, many of which couldn't take it and came down. On my way to work on Wednesday morning I saw several branches that had come crashing down (some pretty darn big ones too), and when I got to work there was no electricity at the store. The clock had gone off at 2.25am (or was it 3.45?), and when I left early at 2pm, the power still hadn't been restored. I found out later that it came back on at 3.30pm. Now, the thing is, this 'storm' paralysed the whole of the city (Austin highways dept. isn't exactly stiff with gritting lorries), unneccessarily as it turned out. On Tuesday evening the local news bulletins were giving out lists of schools, offices, and larger businesses which were going to be closed until noon on Wednesday (by which time the ice should have melted), and many smaller businesses no doubt did the same, but when my wife left for work at about 6.30am, the ice had already melted anyway! My ride in to work that morning was a breeze because half of the people weren't there! There was almost no traffic on the roads, and the bus was almost empty. My boss, who is from here but who spent 10 years in Minnesota was telling us stories of how he had to open the store he worked at when there had been a two foot fall of snow, how he got there at the usual time, and how there were already people waiting to come in at 9am. And Texans have the nerve to call themselves tough? Pshaw!!!

Ice Storm... there's another film I want to see.

All this winter talk at this time of year makes me feel like going skiing... the crisp white blanket of snow... children skating on the ice... building snowmen and having snowball fights... sleigh bells ring, are you listening...

Of course, during the winter I dream of summer sun... beaches... barbeques... sunburn...

Oh well.

Well, there's a snowball fight going on here right now http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F54938?thread=100795&latest=1 :-D Nice to meet you I'm ing through my messages right now, so we'll have to talk more later :-) Bye 4 now

Dang, I should have visited your page before replying, shouldn't I Pegasus that was