Winter comes to the South

After viewing this blog, our friend Gail Rayment emailed me yesterday saying, "What, no snow?" She may have meant this ironically, as in: must be nice not to have to cope with all the white stuff we're getting back home.  Or she may have been referring to the big winter storm that hit the South the last few days.

We didn't get it bad here (nothing like Atlanta), although there was a lot of wind, some sleet and freezing rain and the temperature went down to minus 4 C. one night.  And yes, there was a wee skiff of snow too.

While unpleasant and certainly unexpected,  it didn't seem like much to hardy Canucks used to (if sick of) winter in snow belt Ontario.  But in a land without salt trucks and snow tires (except ours!), it was a good call to close things down for a couple days.  Almost everything was shut.  As it was cold, nothing was open, and many of the roads closed -- and because we were more leery of other drivers than the weather conditions -- we stayed home (and played Rummikub in the bedroom, the warmest room in the house).  When we finally got out today for "supplies," the liquor store man, originally from Illinois, said he'd had to show people how to scrape ice off their cars and use the defrost to clear their windshields.  Poor Southerners.