Are you ready for it...?

That was the prime topic of conversation in town this morning as I made the rounds from the aerobics class at the YMCA to the post office and finally to the feed store to pick up sunflower seeds for the birds.

The forecast this morning for the weather this week is rather grim. Unlike other places in the north and east, where once winter sets in, it is pretty much there to stay, winter in this lower part of Missouri behaves in a rather manic-depressive sort of way. It was nearly 70 degrees on Saturday, we were running around in our shirt sleeves, sitting on the porch basking in the sun drinking coffee. Now the temperature is plunging and near-blizzard conditions are being forecast for some areas of the state, particularly north of the I-44 corridor that sort of divides the state in half. There is some strange atmospherics that go on in this state and often the weather north of I-44 is much worse than what happens down in this part of the state,

But then "much worse" is something of a relative term, isn't it? One wonders what is "much worse:" 2 feet of snow or 2 inches of solid ice? The ice, obviously.

At any rate, we may or may not get a bunch of snow, we may or may not get a lot of freezing rain and ice first -- which is purely horrible -- underneath a bunch of snow, but people this morning were sort of scurrying, realizing that if the bad stuff does hit, they are not prepared. I realized I was almost out of sunflower seed so I did a bit of scurrying myself.

Richard has been scurrying, charging up the laptop batteries, making sure we have water to flush the toilet in case an ice storm wipes out the power, putting concrete blocks in the back of truck to help with traction, making sure the generators have gas...

Just can't ever tell with the weather -- sometimes it happens exactly as it says and sometimes nothing happens at all. Just never know....