True! Where I lived (Kodiak) before I moved to AL, there is a huge Coast Guard base, I believe the largest in the nation. Every three years of service in Kodiak, men are transferred to other bases and are replaced by newbies, many of whom are youngsters from the South, born in a 4WD vehicle, but not used to the deadly road conditions (rain on top of frozen snow on top of solid ice) there. They arrive in the spring of the year, and have a whole summer to drive fast. So they keep on driving fast when winter comes, believing that 4WD will keep them between the ditches (it does not--often not even with 4 studded snow tires) and they end up in the ditches, roll their customized jeeps, or smack into a rock wall or a tree--or into another car. The locals know better than going too fast, and the Coasties (that's what locals call them) get impatient behind them, pass them, and begin to spin their vehicles in the middle of the highway before leaving the pavement. The locals know a few tricks to stay between the ditches. One of them is driving very close to the shoulder, because that is where the sand and gravel spread by the road department trucks accumulates whereas on the rest of the road it's been covered by ice and offers no traction. And of course when you drive on that slimy ice you must forget you have a brake pedal. You need to go slow enough to be able to stop gradually letting go of the gas pedal and gearing down--but not too much, or the wheels will lock and the car will keep going like a sled and the car will not respond to the steering wheel. At times it takes even an hour to drive ten miles. My wife had to drive ten miles to go to work (she taught at a school on the Coast Guard Base), and it was often hell, what with the ice on the road and blizzards and white-outs. Luckily, she never had an accident in 29 years. She left home at 7:30, and many a time the graders that scraped the frozen snow and the sand trucks hadn't yet gone to work on that highway. Often she (and the rest of the school personnel and of the Coasties who lived in town) was very late because somebody else had had an accident and the traffic was snarled and moving at a snail's pace. Boy, do I love the South!If it comes two inches of snow or any frozen precipitation it puts this whole area in stop mode. The folks around here are not used to dealing with that type of weather and are not equipped or prepared for it.
I lived or otherwise been in the South for a total of about 5-6 years.Boy, do I love the South!
Found the RTV....Now where did they hide the street?
As you know, the Global Warming crowd is saying that the enormous snowfall and polar temperatures you are enjoying are caused by... Global Warming. Never mind what they were saying a few years ago, namely that there would be no snow--just rain--because of Globull Warming...No danger of roasting hemorrhoids here but if anyone reading has ever tried touching their tongue to a frozen door knob in the winter would be aware of the possibilities of seating those same hemmorhoids on a cold seat up here. It's official that this is the coldest Feb on record in the last 105 years in this area. (is this how the last ice age started?)
Turkeys in the yard today. Hopefully spring is just around the corner. 4 weeks until turkey season