Flash Freeze: the next day

 Yesterday was the monthly spin in.   A bunch of us spinners gather to spin together for a couple of hours.  It's a fun, social gathering.  We've had weeks of windy, very cold weather and snow squalls.   Yesterday however, there was a break in the weather and instead of stupid cold, it was above freezing.  The roads were great, but it was raining.  More of a drizzle really but enough that I needed my wipers on and not quite enough to make them work efficiently.   It was a nice drive regardless, because there was no snow and you could see the roads!

We headed home about 1pm and by 2:30ish, the temperatures started dropping and the rain was now huge, huge flakes of snow.  They were falling straight down and within just a few minutes the road was covered over.   It kept snowing.   This morning though, the sun was shining and the sky a blue we rarely see in the winter around here. It was however, a crystallised winter wonderland outside.  It wasn't really an ice storm, although it sort of looks like it outside.  It was more of a flash freeze.  It was plus 2 in the morning and -11 by bedtime!

We went into town this morning and the trip in was interesting.   The ice and snow bound trees were far more intense and noticeable on the way, especially in areas not getting quite enough of today's sunshine, or in sheltered places.  However, there was a lot of icy areas still on the roads, and despite the shoulders being plowed, there wasn't a safe place to pull over to take photos.   I still haven't figured out how to quickly adjust the exposure on my phone for snapshots, so the sky really wasn't quite this blue, although it was pretty close.

We ended up not doing all the errands we'd planned.   The part for the kitchen tap turns out to be specialised and not labelled,  so we will have to go back with the part for comparisons.  It still works without it, so no urgency there.  The parking lot at the antique mall was overly full, so we passed on visiting today.   There is a business at the other side of the parking lot, with very clear NO PARKING signs on their workshop garage doors.   People still parked there.   Someone from the shop has parked very closely behind them, only slowing down a bit of access in the parking lot, but making sure the entitled parkers can't get out unless they get the big truck behind them moved.   That will put a bit of a damper on their day, for sure.

I filled the bird feeders when we got home.  Because of the rain, I didn't do it yesterday.   The food in the tray and around the little feeding  holes just gets wet and then freezes when the temperatures drop, making it impossible for the birds to get the food out.  But today, the old plastic feeder, may have just  finally gotten a bit too brittle in the cold and the lid closure snapped.  It's pretty old and is outside all year round so it doesn't surprise me too much.  I'm a bit sad though as  I'll have to go shopping for a new one next nice day.

The blue jays love the peanut feeder.  I'm not so happy about it.  Mainly it's because peanuts are expensive and the blue jays will empty the feeder in 30 minutes or less.  I've only been filling the feeder every other day because otherwise we'd go through way more peanuts than I'm willing to purchase as $43 a bag.   Second, I'm going to have to check to see that these are locally grown peanuts and not imported.  That's easy enough to do but I may still just replace it with a sunflower seed feeder as I know that the black oil sunflower seeds are grown locally, they are a whole lot cheaper, and more variety of birds will eat them.