I’ve always been curies as to why every time it snows people feel the need to go to the store and buy milk and eggs and bread. Why these items and not something that won’t spoil if you were to lose power. The part I always laugh at is even in the worst storms in most of the world things will be back to normal within a day or two. Even if you can’t drive someplace most people could (gasp) walk to get what they may need.

It seems around presidents day we’ve had a few of our biggest snow storms. There’s still enough cold air readily available and a bit more energy available as spring is approaching. This year we’ll have a storm that starts with heavy snow with a few inches of it accumulating. That will change to sleet then freezing rain as warmer air works in aloft first. That seems to be the way things are going with every storm this year.

Another year and more arctic air. This time it stayed below freezing from December 27th through January 7th. with most of those days having highs n the teens and lows in the single digits. This seems to be a common thing the past few years. Wonder what’s causing that. These patterns seem to be locking in the past few years. It’s finally warmed up a bit so we decided to head out for a nice walk on the Northwest Lancaster County River Trail to check out the ice on the Susquehanna not to mention get some fresh air.

Well no big shocker here but another week and another potential ice storm in southern Pennsylvania. State college seems to think up to 1 to 3 inches of snow then it switches to sleet and freezing rain. They’re thinking southern Pennsylvania could receive more than a quarter inches of ice accumulation. They have put us under a winter storm watch. Don’t get me wrong. Ice is interesting but snow is better and more fun and we haven’t had much of that this year.

Well this last storm was one of those times where the cold air just hangs tough at the surface. We ended up below freezing here until about 11am with freezing rain. Some of it was heavy. Cold air damming sure is fun to watch in action. It was a good thing state college issued the ice storm warning. The roads seemed to mostly stay wet but it was really accumulating on the trees and wires and other things.

We ended up getting about six inches of very compact sleet and snow in this storm. It started out with 3 to 4 inches of snow then heavy sleet all night then it warmed up to 33 degrees with sleet and rain. A few ours later the temperature dropped and eventually reached the single digits at night. Everything froze as solid as a rock and is still that way. This is the first time I remember being able to walk on top of the snow.