Freezing Rain!

Living in Africa can limit your winter weather experience to some degree. Not that I am complaining at all. I love the weather patterns we have. Find me someone who grew up on the highveld and didn't love its awesome summer afternoon lightening storms and thundershowers and I will show you someone who should probably immigrate back north again. While it does get cold in SA, it rarely goes into the really low single digits and it is a severe winter that sees subzero temperatures, unless you live in Southerland or Bethlehem of course.

This rambling discourse, in case you are wondering, serves as an introduction to the reason I am at home posting this blog, and not at school enriching the lives of my students. I received a phone call at exactly 5:02 this morning, via the phone-tree, that schools have been closed for the day due to the "freezing rain" that fell during the night. Not a blizzard or heavy snow, but "freezing rain."

Now this "freezing rain" is a concept that, until this morning anyway, I had not been able to get my head around. Freezing Rain? What exactly is "Freezing Rain"? I had images in my mind of the DC/Marvel character Subzero, cruising round on his frozen surfboard shooting streams of frozen water at people and things making them freeze instantly in their tracks. I had images of droplets of rain suspended, or frozen, in midair, with people having to walk around them as they made their way in and out of buildings and cars. I had images of magical drops of rain that turned your entire car or personage into a statue the moment it hit you.

As it turns out, it is none of the above. What it actually is is the fact that it is so cold outside, that the raindrop freezes almost immediately after it makes contact with any exposed surface. When enough raindrops accumulate and freeze on any flat surface it forms a slick plane of ice that is usually not visible to the naked eye. This of course makes walking on the sidewalk a little tricky. More to the point though, is that the layer of ice that forms on the road is also invisible and potentially deadly. And with 95% of students being transported to and from school on the public school's bus service, they decided it was safer to keep the students at home for the day. Hence the reason I am here rambling on about the weather.

Personally I still prefer the “Subzero superhero” explanation, but either way I get the day off school. I took a couple of pictures this morning, without managing to fall on my arse, although I did come close a couple of times. If nothing else, nature is a superb artist!