April 18, 2018

Should I have known it was going to happen? I mean, it’s April, which is supposed to be springtime. That whole, “April showers bring May flowers” vibe is supposed to be doing it’s thing. Really, I think it was quite reasonable of me to remove the ice claw from the bottom of my cane. Aside from sometimes being a nuisance—when the claw is retracted, it’s on the outer side of my cane, and can catch on things if I’m not careful—it’s also heavy. Not ridiculously so, but just enough that it makes a difference.

So no, I don’t think I was out of line taking that thing off my cane a couple weeks ago. That said, we had an ice storm over the weekend just passed. I’d been certain, while it was happening, that by Tuesday night/Wednesday morning—this morning—all sign of that weather event would be gone. But alas, my hopes were dashed. The claw is back on my cane.

This storm was a different tempest for different people, depending upon location. In Toronto, which sits on the shores of Lake Ontario, they experienced the kind of ice storm I usually visualize whenever I hear those two words. They experienced ice coated trees and buildings and utility poles and streets, a clear glass-like casing which was perfectly transparent and ultimately really heavy. Trees came down, power lines came down, and car accidents abounded. Then the temperature rose a little, just enough to cause sheets of ice to cascade to the ground from the tallest of structures. 

Melting occurred, but not a total melting. There was plenty of ice to clog drainage grates, causing flooding and general misery. Falling ice from the CN Tower tore a hole in the dome of the stadium where the Toronto Blue Jays play, resulting in the game scheduled for Monday night to be canceled. More than a hundred thousand people lost electricity during the event, some for as much as thirty hours.

Here, about an hour’s drive west of the Greater Toronto Area, we had a different kind of ice storm. We had no solid ice covering over vehicles, trees, buildings, streets or sidewalks. Instead, it more or less rained ice pellets. From the time the storm began until it ended—practically the entire weekend—we were inundated with what looked like wet, icy snow. The temperature fluctuated, so some of it was rain, a bit was snow, but most of it was ice pellets.

Ice falling in pellet form makes a particular sound on the windows. It’s a sound that says, good thing you don’t have to go anywhere. And if you do, just send an email and cancel. We both stayed indoors throughout this event. We had all that we needed, and gratefully, we only suffered one tiny flicker of our power. The outage lasted less than five seconds. Of course, it was enough to turn off the television and the Keurig. The former then had to reboot, a process that is automatic and can’t be rushed. It takes about five minutes. It happened during the telecast of the ACM awards show—about ten or so minutes in—but we just shrugged and picked up our e-readers and read until the television came back on.

About two inches of white stuff was on the ground here by Monday and fully half of it remains this morning. It really looked like two inches of snow, but there was nothing fluffy about it. At night, it freezes almost solid; and then, during the day, as the temperature inches above freezing, it gets wet and sloppy.

I’m a bit worried about my poor spring flowers. Those tiny little shoots—narcissi, tulips, hyacinths and crocuses—had become fairly substantial before Mother Nature’s little hissy fit. I can still see the tips of them, so I will be hopeful that, being the hardy Canadian perennials that they are, they’ll simply dust themselves off and keep growing.

According to the weather network, the temperature will hit 43 today, and be above 40 and into the 50s over the next seven days. Fact or fiction? Only time will tell.

This has been a particularly long winter, despite having a few days clustered together here and there when it seemed positively balmy out. I did have one magnificent day, in February, I think, when I had my doors open, and fresh air filled my home. I really hate to think that one day was our early spring, come and then gone.

Yesterday my husband expressed the opinion that, because we had such a cold and long winter, we were likely in for a very hot summer. He shrugged his shoulders and said that if that was so, he might be tempted to have us go to the beach—something we haven’t done for a couple of years now.

If it does get very hot, I’ll show him this essay to remind him of his words, and then hold him to it. 


Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury