CoffeeBear.net » Winter

Winter Weather Driving Tips

Mark — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:10:32 +0000

Given the number of intellectually-challenged persons I had to drive around to get home over lunch today¹, I figured it was long past time to write up my best winter weather driving tips.

If the weather looks worse than you feel comfortable driving in, then don’t. Stay home and save the rest of us some headaches.
When the weather is affecting visibility, turn on your headlights. Yes, this means you mister white SUV speeding down the road with no headlights during blizzard-like driving conditions.
Clean as much of the snow and ice off your car as you can reach. This does include the roof & hood of your car as well as the windows. Failure to clear these areas tends to cause the snow/ice to migrate from them to your windows once you get moving, so all that time you spent clearing the windows suddenly has gone to waste.
- And you were carefully clearing off all your windows and not just a tiny viewport in the front & back windows, right?
Unless the road is 100% clean and clear, double everybody’s stopping distance and not just yours.
- When you’re thinking about cutting through a yellow light (or red if you have a death wish), just imagine what will happen if your tires lose traction and somebody is coming the opposite way².

¹ My area is currently under a Winter Weather Advisory and a Blizzard Watch.
² For those of you lacking in imagination, it’s called a car accident.

Winter Weather Driving Tips © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Ice Storm Photos

Mark — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 06:55:12 +0000

11 Dec 2007. Iowa. Cedar Rapids. The weather did suck. Mightly. 12 Dec 2007 everything was coated in a beautiful¹ layer of ice. Fortunately my employer allows me to work from home and I did so yesterday. I still went outside, cleared off the cars and moved them to the other side of the street. Just in case the plows decided to make another pass at cleaning up our street. It wasn’t too bad out but I had a blazing headache, plus work to do and all. I took my camera outside with me and snapped a few hurried photos before rushing back inside to the warmth. Then I spent the day fighting my headache and trying to get some work done. But you don’t care about my suffering, you want pretty pictures. So go look at them already!

¹ Beautiful provided you didn’t have to clear it off your car and try heading into work.

Ice Storm Photos © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Bloody Weather

Mark — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 19:26:28 +0000

We got hit with a blizzard warning for the weekend and last night things were not looking pretty out the windows. Then about 6:30 PM, the power went out. Fortunately, our house has a fireplace so we were able to stay warm until the power came back on around 1:00 AM this morning. We trooped up to bed, got a few hours rest and then went outside to shovel the sidewalks. *blech* Days like today make me hate having a corner lot (twice the sidewalks to shovel). The sidewalks had 4 layers on them: snow, slush, ice and water. It made shovelling the walk even more hellish than usual. Fortunately we have kind neighbors who lent us their snowblower which got rid of the snow and some of the slush. But that left us with plenty of ice and water. A few hours of backbreaking labor later, we had the sidewalks as clean we were going to get them and came back inside. Gack. You have to love living here; otherwise you go insane. I have the pleasant advantage of not loving it, but keeping my sanity locked in a box so I never lose it. :p

Bloody Weather © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Bah Humbug!

Mark — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 21:27:17 +0000

It was raining when I went home for lunch today. When I left to head back to the office; the rain was mixed with snow. *blech* It’s still too warm out for the snow to do anything except melt the moment it touches down, but it’s a sign that we’ve truly moved into Winter. Bah humbug!

Lovely Weather

Mark — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 03:14:52 +0000

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned previously, I live in Iowa. The last couple of years we’ve had cold winters but haven’t really had that much snow. Apparently, Mother Nature was feeling it’s time to rectify that situation and we’ve been having quite the snowstorm. Seeing how I like taking pictures and dislike getting cold; here’s a quick shot I took out my bedroom window. I apologize for the grainess of the image, but I took the picture during my lunch hour and I didn’t have enough time to try removing the window screen before taking it. That and I didn’t want to stand around outside in the cold taking photos; unlike some people I’m not all that eager to suffer for my art. :D