On the sleet where you live

I approach all Winter Weather Events with trepidation, just on general principle, especially since the forecast seems to change hourly. (If you were wondering why we have so many climate-change skeptics here in the middle of the country, it's simple: we've learned to expect the unexpected, although not the unexpected we expected.) *

Further apprehension arises when I note that this will be the first time on slick and nasty stuff with my overpriced semi-luxury sled. It's up to the turn-of-the-century standards that prevailed for that model year, but I have no reason to believe that it in any way advances the state of the art.

One thing that helps is that the freezing drizzle we were told to expect either didn't materialize or never made it to the ground, so while there were a few slick patches around the neighborhood, it was nothing to worry about.

Things got worse heading eastward, though I-44 was passable at 45-50 mph and I-35, with much more traffic, moved along in the lower 40s. The sleet, which was just starting to fall when I left home, was coming down briskly by the time I got to 42nd and Treadmill. For now, they've scaled back the 3-to-7-inches prediction to about half that, though they've added another inch after dark, when things were supposed to be tapering off.

And I'd rather drive on snow than on little ice pellets anyday.

* Yes, I suppose this is rather Rumsfeldian.

Posted at 7:29 AM to Soonerland , Weather or Not