Pelted with Mist

It is 9:07 a.m. I am in Austin at my office working (and blogging in between tasks until my 10:00 a.m. meeting). I got here at the usual time this morning. No one else is in downtown Austin today...no one. The streets are empty, the capital is quiet...our phones are barely ringing. Our Fort Worth office is closed and my boss is in Phoenix for a conference. So that leaves me...the only employee at work today.


For the past two days, the local media has been buzzing about this "ice storm" scheduled to hit last night and cause mad chaos during the morning commute. (As I am writing this, I look out my office window and see only sunshine...oh and a bus...maybe Austin is coming to work today) I left my house at 8:00 a.m., which is 45 minutes later than I would normally leave. I figured since the storm was going to be so bad, I might as well wait until the school traffic was over and done with and get those buses off the road. Oh, but wait, school was delayed two hours this morning. So, I left at 8:00 a.m. for no reason.


The high for today is 58. Yesterday in White Deer, the high was 9. My point is...there was no ice storm in Austin last night. Or if there were...there was no evidence of it this morning.


I was raised in the Texas Panhandle, where it gets bitter bitter cold. When I graduated, I moved to Lubbock where it is equally as cold and super windy. After college, I moved to Washington, D.C....where it snows and snows during the winter. Austin feels almost tropical to me. We have had 80 degree weather this January, and haven't seen a bit of snow since we moved here. So I was a little thrown back when all the "ice storm" talk started yesterday. So much, that I even pulled out my ski jacket and wore it to work today.


Last night, KVUE news alloted 1/3 of their entire news cast to the upcoming "storm". 1/3...that is 8 minutes (once you figure in commercials)! Governor Perry gave the State of the State yesterday and it only got 40 seconds on the local news. The sweet reporter covering the story said she was being "pelted by mist." What does that mean? I wonder if the mist hurt as it pelted down. Seriously...mist?

There could have been a storm and I just slept through it. Or maybe all the county salt and sand trucks are just that good. I don't want to discredit them at all because I know they were up all night conditioning the roads for the "ice."

Meredith didn't go to work until 11:00 a.m. They were afraid the "ice" would be too bad, and didn't want employees to be out in the early morning during the eye of the "ice storm."

I just don't get it.