OT: A Thaw! A Thaw!

It's about time!

The last I heard, we were in for a new kind of "severe weather" I'd never heard of before. Ready for this? (Drumroll) "Freezing Fog!"

Sounds like the Monster of the Deep or something.

Well, I guess I always knew that fog could form and freeze, but....

And it does. It produces the worst kind of ice, sometimes called "black ice." I'll never forget riding home after a visit to relatives on a Sunday night when my father said that, jeez, the road felt like it was getting slippery. He couldn't believe it, but he kept feeling it - you know, like you're steering the back end instead of the front end...ever so daintily.

So, he pulled over and got out and almost wiped out. He'd have been flat on his back if he hadn't had hold of a door handle to catch himself. It was that slick. We all looked at the coating on the road in disbelief: you couldn't tell it was there. (And here in Wisconsin we get very good at detecting any icyness and knowing exactly where we're likely to find it. But this black ice had us completely fooled.)

But the Freezing Fog was nothing: It was the two ice storms before that did us in.

But it's melting now! Now we're getting Thawing Fog! Yeah! Yeah! Bah, humbug on white Christmases!

At last my back door will be cleared (which would have required a pick-axe till now).

Doesn't take much to make me happy, does it?