Winter is here and Georgia is winning

Published 6:14 pm Tuesday, January 10, 2017

I was a little late to work on Monday to absolutely no fault of my own (at least that is my claim). I got to my car in time to make it to work, opened the door, climbed in and the world outside disappeared. My windshield was frozen over and I could see nothing but white. Living in South Georgia and having been raised in Florida, Georgia and Louisiana, I of course don’t have a windshield scrapper in my car.

I was also not as inventive as my co-worker Johnny who decided to use the heel of a boot (creative, right?) to scrape off his window. His excuse isn’t as credible as mine since he lived in Birmingham, which received snow this weekend. He should have been ready!

Having no scrapper and having not thought of using a boot heel, I was forced to wait it out and crank up my defroster to free me from this icy dicey situation.

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Five excruciating minutes later, I was free! A mix of defroster and windshield cleaner/wipers had cleared my window enough that I could see the outside world once again.

During my wait, I of course excitedly sent a picture to my sister to show her that winter does exist down here. She lives just north of Indianapolis where they get highs in the teens and with the wind-chill last week it was negative one day (aww heck no).

She has sent pictures of her car covered in snow, been forced to sprint around to avoid freezing in the tundra and had run ins with icy roads, and that was just one morning.

When she tried to fly home for Christmas the interstate got shut down because they hadn’t salted the roads (I guess I could have thrown some of that on my windshield too and felt like a northerner. Does table salt work?)

Then flights were delayed and canceled because of snow and ice. As this was all going on I am pretty sure I was wearing shorts and trying to figure out how many pairs I needed to take home to service summer winter in Florida.

This weekend we finally got cold though. A friend was circulating a picture that Mother Nature announced that the south would be receiving a year’s worth of winter of the weekend and O’ dear the temperatures would plunge into the 30’s and maybe the 20’s (burrrrr). I even had to turn my heater on for 15 minutes to take the chill out of my apartment when the temperature dipped to 62 (I may have waited a little too long).

This drop and stark arrival of winter will be short lived though. By the end of the week the temperatures will be back in the mid-seventies and we will be debating if we should open windows and enjoy the fresh air.

For one day though I won the winter weather battle with my sister. When I sent her the picture of my frozen windshield I got a quick response that her windshield hadn’t even frozen over that morning. Score one for South Georgia! We did it, you all we survived winter!

There may be more drops, but now we know we can handle it. Even Atlanta did better this time and didn’t have to shut down for days due to snow flurries (they are dangerous, be careful…).

Part of Georgia was painted white and there was frost here in little ol’ Bainbridge.

George R.R. Martin and the Game of Thrones crew have been promising that winter was coming for years now (spoiler alert: I think it finally showed up). Georgia won this battle though.

Martin may have dragons and have brought people back from the dead (sorry, another spoiler), but guess what, Georgia got to winter first. Score another one for the South Georgia!

About Brandon O'Connor

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