Flip Flop Weather

No, not that kind of flip flop.

This weather is the pits. It seems to flip flop from rain to snow to warm rain to freezing rain. It wrecks havoc on our lives because the conditions get precarious. If it was just consistently warm or cold, that would be fine. It’s the fickle nature of it all that drives me crazy, but I guess that’s life in New England.

We had this beautiful snowfall a week or two back, and we were all stoked. The kids loved it and had friends over to play in it. N especially loves it, he’s such an engineer, building tunnels and forts. Granted, it’s a pain to shovel, and it costs us to have the driveway plowed, but we love it, nonetheless. It just changes the spirit and atmosphere of winter, for the better.

And then it rained. It warmed up to the 40s and poured for two days. Bye-bye snow. This was a bummer, to say the least, but then it had to drop back down to arctic cold temperatures, whereby the melted snow turned to a sheet of ice, making driving and overall locomotion precarious. This was followed by freezing rain, which really made things crazy. In fact, we got stuck in our driveway because I was moving too slowly and simply slid back down into a snow bank. I was ready to call a neighbor with a tractor when we finally managed to wiggle our way out. It was a little frustrating.

Things seem to have calmed a bit, but it’s still icy everywhere you go. Then two nights ago we had cold temperatures followed by snow, and we once again got stuck on a hill. We were taking A to her sleepover party, and NP’s house is up on a hill. R was driving and we got about 80% up and then the wheels starting slipping. We ended up sliding backward, which is a total bummer. Part of the problem is that the car has traction control, which sort of malfunctions in icy conditions because it somehow over-compensates. We were told to turn it off under these conditions, but we forgot how.

In the end, it’s nice and pretty once again after the snow came. I’d love get some more skiing in, but we’ll how the weather goes.

Until the next time, thanks for reading, and thanks to Rudolf Vlcek for the pic.