07:41 – Yesterday was the first “normal” day in a long time. Barbara went to work and came home. We had dinner and watched TV for a while. No phone calls from her parents. No emergencies. No doctor appointments or meetings. We’re hoping for another normal day today.
The weather forecasters say we can expect our first snow of the season, with rain today turning into sleet and snow this evening. We’re expecting one to two inches (2.5 to 5 cm) of snow tonight, which is a blizzard for us. In the mountains not far to our west they’re expecting 5 to 10 inches. She’ll drive her car to work today, but tomorrow she’ll take the Trooper. When there’s winter weather, I like having her in a 4X4. Also, the Trooper weighs about 4,500 pounds (2,000+ kilos), and I much prefer her being in a vehicle that has some serious mass.
I got half a liter of Kastle-Meyer reagent made up yesterday, which I’ll bottle today. I also got 30 sets of Dragendorff reagent A and B bottled, so now I have all I need to make up some forensic science kits. After I get those built, I’ll assemble 15 biology kits, assemble the eight chemistry kits I have materials for, and get started on the next batch of 60 chemistry kits. That’ll probably take me into tomorrow and possibly the weekend.
16:58 – The forecast keeps getting worse. This morning, they were calling for one or two inches of snow tonight. Around noon, they’d boosted that to 2 to 4 inches. As of the 15:41 update, they’re now calling for 3 to 5 inches. It’s just lucky the colder air didn’t move in sooner. When Barbara emptied the rain gauge last night, there were about 2 inches in it. Since then, we’ve had another 2 inches of cold rain. If all of that had come down as snow, we’d have something like a meter of snow on the ground now. More likely around here, though, it would have come down mostly as freezing rain, enough to take down big trees and cause major days-long power outages. So we really have dodged the proverbial bullet.