Ice Ice Everywhere ( and Flooding in Malaysia)

Just like some parts of the country right now,

we're having freezing rain, sleet, ice pellets, whatever you wanna call it.

"In American usage, sleet is a form of precipitation consisting of tiny frozen raindrops, or ice pellets. This is often mistaken for hail, but forms in a different fashion and is usually (but not always) smaller. This occurs when snow flakes falling through a small layer of warmer air in the atmosphere will begin to melt. They can then refreeze if they pass back into a layer of colder, sub-freezing air closer to the ground, resulting in little balls of ice. These ice balls may bounce when they hit the ground, and do not freeze into a solid mass unless mixed with freezing rain. Sleet is not to be confused with soft hail, which forms through another process."

( reference: Answers.com)

This is what I woke up to, today.







The Sleet in Action


Purdy......but VERY dangerous weather/road conditions right now

Sunday 1/14/2006 10 a.m.

Church services have been cancelled today..

We've bought a couple of kerosene convection heaters and a huge 5 gallon drum of kerosene ( Praise the Lord, we called our neighbor, who works at Tractor supply Co., and he brought it to us when he came home from work yesterday - David was taking no chances on the VERY icy and slick roads ).

We were trying to plan for if the power lines came down from just being too heavy-laden with ice, or if a tree/tree limb came crashing down on them, for although the house has central heating, even our standby space heaters run on electric. You never know.

Freezing rain is still falling down in pellets this morning and things aren't going to get any better in the next few days. This morning I went out and insulated the outdoor dogs' houses with cardboard, stuffed up any drafty areas ( Missy has a very sturdy commercial dog house, but we had nailed boards and pallets to make an A frame house for Wuss, and it is off the ground - pretty good work, if i say so myself ) and fill them up on turkey bones ( hey, I roasted a turkey yesterday - it even helped warm up the kitchen. LOL ) and dog jerky. Had to go out several times yesterday with an "ice pick" and hot water to melt the dogs' water so they wouldn't go thirsty.

Not only are WE having bad weather, my hometown in Malaysia is having a second wave of floods, just a few weeks after the bad flooding in December. Luckily, although the district/county where my family is, is hit by floods, the main town area where they stay is not under water. My sister, JumbledMind, has been reporting on the floods, wading around in flood water and riding around in 4WDs and sampans ( little boats ) for her newspaper, The Star, and so we're keeping her in our prayers that she will be safe while getting the stories.

For more pictures of the floods in Malaysia ( taken from the Star Online website ), click HERE.