Winter Snow Storm 2011

Parking lot full of ice!

This past week has been awful as far as weather is concerned here in Dallas. It started out as freezing rain early Tuesday morning. Usually that's no big deal for me here because they usually blow the winter weather out of proportion. Texans really aren't used to having too much snow or ice. However on Tuesday I woke up and there was so much ice, I couldn't even move my car! The parking lot of our complex looked like an ice skating rink. The grass was frozen and there was even ice up on our second story landing, which is covered. It made it difficult to open the door, and the poor puppies did not like going out in it at all!

On the second day, Wednesday I was able to get my car out, but got it stuck on Josey, and then again in the apartment complex at the bottom of a hill. We watched lots of cars sliding around and some even hitting other cars. On the third day my boss, Scott, was nice enough to come get me and give me a ride to and from work. While I was at work Chuck was able to get the car unstuck. He made a run to the grocery store and said it was still very dangerous out!


 Yesterday was the forth day of the "Winter Storm 2011", thats what the news is calling it. Early in the morning it snowed hard core! I think there was about 2-3 inches of snow on the ground when I left for work. The snow made it great for me to drive in, providing lots of traction. However other people were sliding all over. The worst part was that people would freak out and stop moving, lots of times on a big hill. This would cause a lot of other people to stop and get stuck. One of my co-workers ended up ditching his truck trying to avoid an accident right in front of him. 

The main road I drive on to go to work.

The main fun started when I got home that day. They were nice enough to let myself and Emily off early since the roads were getting worse. It took me about 45 minutes to make the 15 minute drive, and the roads were no longer snow covered, but back to ice as the slush from the cars was freezing. The real worry here in Texas for us northerners isn't the roads, but the Texans that are driving on them haha. They almost never see snow, let alone inches of ice on the roads. And we are far from equipped to deal with maintaining the roads. I heard they had brought in lots of plows and sand trucks from some of the western cities in Texas. But they refuse to use salt because of the erosive effects on the road. Anyways, what did we do when I got home? Take the dogs out of course! They had a blast in it! Bailey kept burring her face in the snow and digging at it. Rylie just wanted to eat every little bit of it. We would throw snowballs at her and she would try to catch them with her mouth! She also would chase the snowballs as if they were a tennis ball, and then eat them up when she found where it landed.