Storm, Not So Nice

     It could have been worse.  It could have been one of those telegenic ice storms with two inches of ice on everything, trees all bent over, power lines snapped and a general sense of Fimbulwinter come to call.

     Instead, we have a scant dusting of icy stuff.  But the TV reports over 350 school closings or delays and the pattern is clear: delayed in the city and larger towns, cancelled in the countryside.  The storm has laid down a near-perfect layer of black ice and if your street hasn't had sand, ice or a steady stream of traffic on it, it's liable to be a skating rink.

     And there's the least freezing mist steadily renewing the ice, something between sleet and pogonip.  Out at the airport, that's the problem; departing flights are cancelled, not because of ice on the runways, where they started with the weather and kept well ahead, but ice on the planes: by the time they get a loaded jet deiced and taxied out to the runway, it's icing up again, at a rate that will have it in a very bad way before it has climbed through the weather.  So, no flights until the ice mist ends.

    So, how about that weather, hey?  Sheesh!

     ETA: Worse than it looks from indoors and the mist has picked up to a steady drizzle.  My G5RV ham antenna, a 120' long chunk of wire (a kind of center-fed doublet), is weighed down by accumulated ice and walking a full trash bag out for collection is very difficult.  3/8" ice on windshields and sidewalks, maybe a little more.