The Surprise Ice Storm Of the Century!

The kids enjoying the sunshine and warm weather.

I'm a little late getting to this story, but I wanted to write about it anyway. Our weather has been incredibly mild this winter. While they are enjoying feet of snow at home, we have been enjoying 40+ degree weather with a dab of coolness every now and then. Proceeding this past Tuesday we've had very nice February weather. On Saturday the 9th it got up near 60 and had been in the 50's most of the week before. It's been wonderful, but Tuesday sent us a change.

Gracie enjoyed her walk in the sun as well.

It had gotten colder over night with temperatures in the 20's and had a hard time bouncing back. The meteorologists were all predicting rain. The temperature on the ground never rose above freezing so the rain turned into freezing rain. It happened very quickly. No one expected it. I went to get Sarah Kate at the bus stop and when I left the house our car was just wet from rain, when I got to the bus stop, maybe 1/8 of a block away, all the cars were iced. I happened that quickly.

When I got home from the bus stop at 3:30 I called Kenny and told him he may want to leave early because it had started icing at the house. He stayed about 15 minutes or so and then headed out. (It's key to this story that you know that because there was only a threat of mild rain, Kenny had ridden his motorcycle to work.) I turned on the news at 4:00 and found out they had closed the freeway due to freezing on the bridges. I called him at work, but he had already left. I called his cell phone a few times, but he couldn't answer because he was on the bike. He called me around 4:45 and told me he had driven down the shoulder for a ways, but that traffic was really, really slow and that he would be late getting home. I informed him that the freeway had been closed and he may want to try driving down the shoulder some more.

So, to make a long story not quite as long, he gathered about 8 other motorcyclist and created a motorcycle gang that drove down the shoulder. By the time they got to the police they were down to just 3 (the others didn't want to brave it.) The policeman asked where they came from and Kenny told them just up the road. He told them that they had made it that far and that he wasn't going to stop them, but that they should stay together. They help out with 4 or 5 accidents on their drive and Kenny said the bridges were pure ice. He had to use his feet as skies to keep from falling over.

Meanwhile I was at home very nervous. I hadn't heard from him since 4:45 and it was now around 6:30. I knew it was still raining and icing, but I didn't know where he was. I only hoped that some nice person had let him sit in their car. Around 6:45 I heard his bike outside. I ran downstairs and opened the garage to this. . .

YES! The white you see is all ice!

Boy was I surprised. I was happy to have him home and I just had to grab the camera. He looked amazing. He was literally covered in ice from head to toe. His bike was so frozen that he couldn't push the button to turn it off. It was quite the sight. He said it was a lot of fun. He enjoys helping people and being able to deal with unusual circumstances. I was just glad he made it home safe and rather quickly. We found out the next day that a friend of ours that works at the Pentagon didn't get home until after 11:00. How crazy! Kenny was very glad he had his bike and didn't have to be out until 11:00.

Here's a picture with the visor down. Look at how shiny it is from the ice.