Ice Storm

Well, this snow storm has not quite melted as quickly as snow has in the past. In fact, it has not melted at all. It has become an ice storm. This is something new to me. Ice storm? What does it do? Rain ice? That is called a hail storm. I never did understand an ice storm. Until now.

An ice storm is when you have snow and then rain on top of the snow and then a quick drop in temperature, creating ice. Over everything. We went for an ice storm exploration hike in the woods by our house. Here are some of the resulting pictures:

Here, you can see the ice on a bush nearby. I couldn't get good pictures of it, but I saw branches with .5" of ice around them!


We discovered that you could peel the leaves right off the ice and get a sort of "leaf fossil!" Beautiful. We now have a bunch of prize ice fossils in our freezer. Here's our best picture of one:



Those ice fossils are really fragile. It took a lot of concentration getting them off with mittens on without breaking them!




We even were able to pull them off waist high grass, but they kept breaking before we could get a picture of them. Here's a remnant of one of them.



Gone are the days of sledding and snowball fights. There is a 1" layer of ice over everything now. It brings its own beauty, but some of the allure, I admit, is gone. Tomorrow is our 6th day in our house without leaving it. 200,000 people are without power and everything is closed. We've had a really great time. We've spent a lot of fun time together as a family; however, I can see how the situation here could be really serious if you were not prepared. (Don't worry, we've got plenty of food and get water from our own well and have a generator that can run our entire house if our power goes out. We're set!) Living in the rural Northwest is seriously so much fun. Stay tuned for the posts about the promised coming floods!

Fun in the Snow!

Today we woke up to a phone call from wonderful Lovena Jenkins informing us that due to snow, church has been cancelled. We looked outside, and this is what we saw:

It was so gorgeous! A foot of snow and snowflakes the size of silver dollars. My kids immediately set out for some fun. By 8:00 am my kids were all out looking for the best sledding hill in the neighborhood. They found a great one and built a ramp and a jump to boot. We had such a fun day!






Sammi really got into the snow:



I love snow days around here because since there is no snow removal, everything stops. The only thing there is to do is to go out in the snow as families. You play and play and play and really get the most out of the snow. Then, in a few days, it melts. It stay just long enough for you to enjoy it. Once the joy is gone, it also is gone. It is quite a nice arrangement. We've had such a great family day today. I love snow days.