It's raining ice tonight...

Here in Wales, it's been noisy out for a couple of nights. Last night, it was some animal I didn't recognize -- maybe a coyote -- keening awhile before dawn. Or maybe it was a really loud bird. It didn't really sound like either, but rather a cross between the two.

I'll take that noise over tonight's raining ice anytime. I'm glad I don't need to go anywhere on Wednesday, that the most important thing is to stay here and work on a fun project that demands my attention now and should have had it a couple of months back. I can't say time isn't my friend, for it regularly, repeatedly brings good times and people my way. But time seems to be aging right along with me, and it's not nearly as flexible as it used to be, either.

Oh, well. At least I'm not on Mount Washington, trying to chip ice away from a surface in 65 mph winds. And my inside walls aren't frosted up like theirs are, as shown here during their sustained 120 mph winds last April. Mid-April, even.

One last late-night question: why don't I get Jack Frost on my windows here at Toad Woods? The climate is similar to that of Battle Creek, Michigan, where the single pane upstairs windows regular sported a wide variety of Jack Frost patterns during the winter months of my childhood. I am plagued by single pane windows here, too. They're double-hung, wood framed, albeit 60 years newer than the Battle Creek windows. But they don't ice up, and there's no Jack Frost. Not enough interior humidity?

You know it's bad outside when...

...the short version of this afternoon's Accuweather forecast includes these words:

"...ice accumulations may cause power outages."

Oh, joy.

More of that noisy freezing rain stuff has been falling from the sky. No cracking tree branches yet, unless they're SPDs. My sixty-four thousand dollar question du jour is whether or not to go out and remove the lake of slush covering the concrete apron and bottom part of my driveway.

If I do, the rest of the freezing rain that falls today may well turn into thick glare ice that's all but impossible to remove until the temperature warms up again and the ice melts.

If I don't and the slush lake freezes hard while the freezing rain continues falling and the temperature drops, the driveway lake ice will be thick enough to supporting a fishing shack until spring.

Okay, maybe not until spring....

There's likely to be a period of some unknown number of hours after the freezing rain is through falling and before the slush freezes rock hard. Whether or not I'll notice when that is and remove the slush in time is problematic at best.

At least I'm not trying to drive in this. And the power is still on and steady. (Knocking wood....)

Yes, I live here. By choice and All That Jazz....

Doomed.

So I went out with the shovel and ice scraper for a test run. There's a layer of "chop-chop-chop" ice underneath the "push it out of the way" slush. I am not going to spend the next couple of hours working in the freezing rain clearing the pavement inch by inch only to leave a smooth, clean surface for ice to build up on again. And I'm not going to push the slush out of the way, for that would only provide a direct ice-to-ice bonding surface.

Instead, I'm going to have a cup of chocolate hazelnut cocoa. The Cocoa-Latte just stopped spinning.

It's the things we know, but don't think of on our own...

Duh.

That 40# bag of ice melt in my garage isn't there for looks or to take up space. There's plenty of more interesting stuff to cover those bases.

Many thanks to galtine1, intelligentrix, timill, and madtruk for pointing out the salt/kitty litter/dark ash metric tonne of prevention treatment options for my driveway. I've scraped the layer of slush that was willing to part with the hardened slush and ice beneath it, took some photos of the iced magnolia and alien greenery, spread a layer of Road Runner Ice Melt, then came inside and popped the Aroma Wrap from lesliet_ma into the microwave. Two minutes later and its warmth is coursing through my chilled skin and tired muscles, all the way to the bone. Nice.

As skzb has been known to sing, "War is bad. Peace is good." In addition to helping you move bodies, real friends help melt the ice and warm my soul. Thank you, all.

"Ice Pellets"

That's what Weather Underground is reporting for the current condition in Wales. Ah, yup. 100% change of precipitation, they got that right, too.

I climbed the hill of ice called my driveway up to the mail box, then took a look around the yard on the way back to the house. The birch tree is horizontal again. There are thoroughly-iced oak leaves up by the road. The oak leaves still dangling from their branches, of course.

Remember the photo of the iced pine from the December ice storm? The ice is 2-3 times as thick on each needle this time around, and we're headed into the long night rather than noontime sun and warmth.

I wondered why I'm not hearing trees and branches crack and fall, then surmised that the most vulnerable ones are already on the ground. It's also not as windy. That's helping. But the ice...there's so much more ice this time around.

Apparently it's not causing much in the way of real world problems in the area so far. I've checked Boston.com, MassLive.com, and all of the Springfield TV station websites. The coverage is all from this morning and early afternoon, with headlines like Few problems reported from miserable wintry mix. And, yes, that article quotes someone talking about how the December ice storm weeded out the weaker trees.

Still, it's a lot of ice out here west of 128...and 495.