Monday, December 17, 2012

The joys of freezing rain.

Today is the second of three days of freezing rain. Yesterday, when we took Adrian back to his group home, the rain had already begun. We took the wise choice of routes, avoiding the 416, the thruway (motorway) and sticking to the city streets. We drove slowly and the 20 minute journey took 35 minutes. Still, it was a safe ride.

Today, Julian dropped by to see how the solar panels were doing with frozen rain and snow on them. The snow rakes just slid over the 1/2" of ice and none could be dislodged. The driveway was a solid sheet of ice too, and only small sections of slush and ice could be removed. I spread some sand over the ice so people would not fall.

Later in the day we drove to the local mall for grocery shopping. As we parked the car, Anne asked, "Is this rain or freezing rain?" My answer that it was rain was incorrect, as, when we unloaded the groceries, I saw that the car was completely covered in sheets of ice.

One bonus of the frozen ice was that as I chipped it off the car dirt and salt were also removed. The car is much cleaner, at least for the moment.

By noon the temperatures hovered around freezing so I was able to shovel the ice from the driveway. Only after several attempts was I able to remove the ice from two of the twenty-one solar panels.

More freezing rain and drizzle are on the way tonight and tomorrow. However tomorrow's high temperature is supposed to be 3C, so there is a chance we can get more panels clear.

Last week's long range forecast predicted we would have knee deep snow this week. That would have been much more easy to deal with!

No comments:

Post a Comment