Living in the Midwest can be fun. For instance, yesterday, as I was driving out to my folks’ house, it was pouring down rain and about forty-eight degrees. The forecast called for “light snow” late in the evening. Not a word of freezing rain or ice. How foolish was I, believing the TV meteorologists…
By 4:00 or so it was snowing, but it appeared to be melting even before it hit the ground. No problem, right? But when I went out to warm up the car later that night, I was greeted by a station wagon covered with about 1/4″ of form-fitting snow, underneath which was another 1/4″ of solid ice. Better yet, the entire street was literally an ice rink; I could almost see my reflection. I can deal with snow, but ice is another matter.
So, rather than throw caution to the wind and brave the rural two-lane home, I became an overnight guest. Spring can’t come too soon; are you with me?
Do they make these w/ manual transmissions, Tom?
How peppy are they?
I believe they did offer a manual, but good luck finding one. The T-5s are definitely peppy, but mine is a “manumatic” non-turbo 2.4i with 168-hp. Not a hot rod, but fine on the Interstate. They stopped importing them after 2011.
My dad drives an ’05 S40 (the sedan version) with a manual, but I remember he got a great deal on it because the dealer couldn’t find takers. I don’t think I’ve seen another one with the 5-speed.
I fed the cows and horses last night in a driving rain, and in that same slushy/crunchy snow this morning… The weather guessers are saying 3-5″ Thursday night (maybe I’ll finally get to plow some snow this winter with my ’50 8N!).
Ready for Spring any time now…
Yeah…when I was a kid, the only “snowplow” we had was when I got a running start shoving a snow shovel ahead of me.
NOW…all the options, from dime-store snowblowers to old 4x4s to skid-steers with crawl tracks and four-way plows mounted on the lift frame…there’s no excuse not to have power snow removal; trouble is, I don’t have a home to use it on!
Ice storm hit us in Central Wisconsin as well. Rain all afternoon; and started freezing just as I got off work. Fun trip, 35 miles of country roads…
I am with you. Every time I go out I have to shovel snow drifts from my drive way and more often than not clear the car of snow, even if it hassnt been snowing.
Growing up in the Pacific northwest I didn’t learn about midwest winters until I went to Grand View College in Des Moines, Iowa, for two years. My dorm room was on the northeast corner of the 1890’s building, and I could tell the wind direction in the room.
The coldest I got that first winter was when we went to an away basketball game in northern Minnesota. There were six of us in a brand new 1957 Ford sedan, and with the heater and defroster going full-blast there were two spots on the windshield about a foot in diameter above the defroster vents that were free of frost. On the way back to Des Moines the temperature was something like 10 or 20 below zero and there was a 10-knot wind. We stopped a couple of times at diners to warm up.
What I disliked most about the winters in Des Moines was the monochrome color palette – everyone burned coal there, and the snow started turning gray after it had been there a couple of days. That, and the black leafless branches of the trees against an often-gray sky, looked pretty sad to a kid like me who was used to everything being green all winter.
Not that we didn’t have fun at times…there was one December day when the temperature rose to about 50. Snow was melting everywhere, the gutters were full, there were lakes in lawns and on parking lots. Then in about an hour and a half the temperature plunged toward single digits, and many of us went ice-skating on the flash-frozen lake on the front lawn.
The Columbia Gorge and metro Portland get this kind of ice storm quite often. The Gorge is the only sea-level break in the Cascade Mountains for hundreds of miles. We get marine moisture from the coast, then a shift in air pressures squirts cold continental air through the Gorge. The temperature drops and the wind comes up and ice covers everything, just like a giant ice maker.
When that happens it’s nice to have all-wheel drive available. One big reason Subarus are so popular around here. Also the damned studded tires that chew gullies into our roads.
I know a lot of people who simply do no lock their cars when it snows and ices really bad. It is hard enough getting a door open let alone a lock. I had a friend once from NC here that moved to Connecticut for a couple of years and made the mistake of going through a gas station car wash then woke up the next morning and all of vehicle was shrouded in ice. I am glad that I live and work in the warmer climes…
Drove head-first into that very storm this morning. 6AM, westbound, into Marysville, Ohio [a.k.a. Hondaville, USA]… Brutal, biggest snowflakes ever, like a tunnel into the frozen abyss.
What’s that white stuff???
We had 96F on Monday here, but by 10pm it had only dropped to 86F and was still 78F at 4:30am – then a change came through and the temperature fell to 66F while the humidity rose to 87% or so and it tried to rain. That was the 6th day in a row over 90F, and several of the nights were warm enough to make it difficult to sleep.
Lots of fires around too, burning thousands of acres, many houses and unfortunately causing a couple of deaths. Hopefully any Aussie CC’ers have not been caught by the fires.
Reminds me of some cold weather test photos I have seen from the past.
Ha – the second appearance of the 1957 Ford in this thread….