Skip to main content

Ice storm


It was cold and drizzly all day Monday and Tuesday, and Tuesday evening the temperature dropped further and the skies started pelting Fort Worth with little pellets of ice. The net result was a 1/4" thick sheet of solid ice covered with a crunchy layer of icy beads. Traffic chaos, but very beautiful when the sun came out on Wednesday morning.


7th St outside our apartment has a slight incline, and many vehicles were struggling to gain traction up the hill. This truck gave up and decided to reverse back down the middle of the road.


The pavements were fine, with an effect like walking on fine gravel, but where on the roads, where the cars compressed all the ice, it was very slippery. Everything travelled at about 15 mph.


This is a leaf encased in the ice layer on the car park, and this shows the texture of the ice.
















Once the sun got going it all started melting pretty soon, resulting in semi-frozen rivers down the edge of the road.

A couple more pretty pictures just for the fun of it.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Love the pictures!

Popular posts from this blog

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions.  The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?"  This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them.  Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone.  That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of.  Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died.  And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was.  His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...

Baby Language

For some reason baby equipment is an area in which American English differs markedly from British English. As well as learning how to care for a baby, we had to learn a whole new vocabulary! Fortunately we are now fluently bilingual, and I have compiled a handy US-UK baby dictionary for you. Diaper n. Nappy Mom says if you can read this change my diaper. The first time you change one of these you will be all thumbs and stick the little adhesive tabs to yourself, the baby and probably the changing mat before you get them where they ought to go. A few years later you will be able to lasso a running toddler and change them before they even know what's happened (yes, I have seen it done). You will also get through more diapers than you ever thought possible, creating scary amounts of expense and waste. Hence we are now mostly using: Cloth diaper n. Reusable nappy Cool baby. No longer those terry squares, the main drawback is that there are now so many types it can be qu...

Portway: Alport Heights

I'm climbing into the southern reaches of the Peak District on this walk, and it's all about the views. I am threading my way along the triangle of land between the River Derwent to my right and the River Ecclesbourne to my left. The rivers define broad sweeping valleys, while in between, the smaller streams of Black Brook, Lumb Brook and Shipley Brook have carved out their own dips in the landscape. Grassy meadows are draped over all these voluptuous curves like green velvet, with trees in pompom clumps. It's the perfect weather to appreciate all this springtime beauty. From the moment I step out of the car, I know it's going to be a good walk. This signpost is where I got to last time . I carry on past the Bluebell pub in Farnah Green, and turn left to find the Lumb Brook, which is down in a particularly steep, tree-lined valley. The path runs along the top, and you feel as if you are up in the canopy of a forest. Lumb Valley trees The next field is noisy with sheep...