Bits of glass falling from the sky
Today is the 3rd time it has snowed since I have been here. You saw my first snow experience (or if you didn't, you can click here to see it). The 2nd one came and went in the blink of an eye - with no telltale signs that it had come at all. But today, it made its presence known. Have you been hearing about the severe storms that have been hitting the midwest? Well, we got it here today. This morning it was very pretty - and I bundled up in excitement. But in the time it took for me to get myself together and out the door, it quickly turned into tiny little pieces of ice - my classmate called it rock salt. Pretty accurate. By the time I got to campus, it had turned into lots of different sizes of pieces of ice, and the roads were slushy and slippery.
I was walking to class from the parking lot and as is my habit when the umbrella is up, I listened to the sounds of ice bouncing off my umbrella, and I concluded that it was much noisier than rain. It didn't have that soothing sound rain sometimes does, but rather like a string of staccato and cacophonous rhythms; nonetheless I still listened in wonder - and then marveled at the silence when I went through an underpass. Decidedly, ice falling on my umbrella was much more noisier than rain or snow. Hail is louder still, I know, as it has hailed every now and then when I lived in Tujunga. But I do have to say that the crunch crunch of icy snow under my feet was music to my ears as I walked across the inch of snow that had fallen around our building.
Then, we sat in class for 2 hours, only to find out during the break that all classes were canceled after 4 p.m. This was an indicator of how bad it was out there. It wasn't that it was that there was snow being dumped on us, but that there was icy snow and sleet everywhere, making the driving conditions very very dangerous. I scraped off the icy snow on my car that had accumulated in the past 2 and a half hours, turned on some music, and prayed before I left the parking lot - you see, I haven't changed my tires to all-season tires yet.... And then I started on my journey home.... a 12-minute drive took me half an hour; my speed was generally 20 miles per hour and around hilly parts I decided to use the lower gear so that I wouldn't have to rely on my brakes so much to slow me down. What an experience it was!! And yes, I'm looking into getting my tires changed....
As I sit here in my living room back home, the cacophonous noise of ice falling from the sky has died down and now I hear what seem like tiny pieces of glass clinking against the metal part of the window unit that sticks out on the outside of my apartment. Perhaps it's not really a cacophony but some sort of winter melody that I have to get used to. This is, after all, not Southern California.... :)
I was walking to class from the parking lot and as is my habit when the umbrella is up, I listened to the sounds of ice bouncing off my umbrella, and I concluded that it was much noisier than rain. It didn't have that soothing sound rain sometimes does, but rather like a string of staccato and cacophonous rhythms; nonetheless I still listened in wonder - and then marveled at the silence when I went through an underpass. Decidedly, ice falling on my umbrella was much more noisier than rain or snow. Hail is louder still, I know, as it has hailed every now and then when I lived in Tujunga. But I do have to say that the crunch crunch of icy snow under my feet was music to my ears as I walked across the inch of snow that had fallen around our building.
Then, we sat in class for 2 hours, only to find out during the break that all classes were canceled after 4 p.m. This was an indicator of how bad it was out there. It wasn't that it was that there was snow being dumped on us, but that there was icy snow and sleet everywhere, making the driving conditions very very dangerous. I scraped off the icy snow on my car that had accumulated in the past 2 and a half hours, turned on some music, and prayed before I left the parking lot - you see, I haven't changed my tires to all-season tires yet.... And then I started on my journey home.... a 12-minute drive took me half an hour; my speed was generally 20 miles per hour and around hilly parts I decided to use the lower gear so that I wouldn't have to rely on my brakes so much to slow me down. What an experience it was!! And yes, I'm looking into getting my tires changed....
As I sit here in my living room back home, the cacophonous noise of ice falling from the sky has died down and now I hear what seem like tiny pieces of glass clinking against the metal part of the window unit that sticks out on the outside of my apartment. Perhaps it's not really a cacophony but some sort of winter melody that I have to get used to. This is, after all, not Southern California.... :)
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