Small Winter Storm
This January has been a lot colder than normal and last weekend was another example. A storm was coming across from the west and expected to give us a wintry mix. I did my due diligence and made sure the generator was running properly and had plenty of fuel. I also carried the snow shovel and ice melt to the house from the shed. I just want to be prepared but honestly was not expecting a whole lot.
As the storm moved west, we were seeing stories from Atlanta and other southern cities on the snow they were getting. For our location, the prediction was right on the line of maybe snow or maybe freezing rain (ice). At my house, we started to see a bit of snow in the late afternoon on Friday. Nothing dramatic since nothing was sticking. It has been very cold lately but the only place the light snow dusting was sticking was on top of my garbage.
As it got later, it changed to freezing rain. Not what I hoped for but mother nature does what she wants. Since it was dark, I just hoped for the best and watched football.
I did get up in the middle of the night to let one of our dogs out. I first wanted to check out the front steps and sidewalk. It was icy. It was not real thick...maybe 1/10 of an inch but enough to make you slip. I decided to go ahead and ice melt the steps and the walkway. Since the skies were clear, why not. I did carry the dog out and let he go and carried her back in.
When morning came, I went back out and the steps and sidewalk in front of the front door were all clear of ice. I was able to let all the dogs out and not worry that they would bust their butt just trying to get to the grass. What really surprised me was by 10am, most of the ice was gone from the trees and anywhere the sun was able to hit it. I thought to myself, this was not that bad.
Now comes Sunday and I want to go ride. Decided to do a loop that I have done MANY times. So I got all layered up and headed out about 1:30pm. The roads were is great shape. Most were dry and I only saw ice in the shady spots OFF the road.
As I headed northeast, I did start to notice that the woods and yards had a bit more accumulation than I did at my house. Now keep in mind, I am only about 7 miles from my house. I did not think the roads would be bad.
Now I am about 12-15 miles from the house. As I traveled on a few back roads, I did start to come across very icy sections. As I kept going, it kept getting worse. It seems that where I live, we were quite lucky in that we did not get much but you venture 10 miles away, they got 1/4" of ice and over 1" of snow...and it was showing on the roads. The shady sections were ice. Some have a few lines where cars had been driving but you had to go very slow and could feel the motorcycle sliding a bit. I really did not think I would be hitting this much ice. The temperatures would great and it was sunny but I was basing my decision on what happened at MY house (which was virtually nothing).
Overall the ride was great. There were patches where you had to go very slow. I was a little concerned in some areas about the road conditions but was more concerned that the cars were just flying through it. In the end, I made it to my destination in one piece and did not drop the bike once. The lesson from today is before you go out riding after a snow storm, double check the amounts of ice and snow that fell AROUND you. Do not assume if you got none, nobody else did too!