The Ice Season Cometh. Now.

Freezing rain contributed to this pileup on
a Utah highway a couple years ago. 

Once we get into December especially, and on through until at least March, freezing rain and sleet becomes a much bigger hazard.

Cue the winter weather advisories. And the extremely stupid people who insist on driving faster than a rocket ship on glare ice.

A huge area from Ohio, on through almost all of Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and the northwest corner of Massachusetts are in for some ice later today and tonight.

The concern this time isn't so much ice caving in trees and power lines, but people not knowing how to drive on icy roads, and causing crashes.

By this late in the season, cold blasts from Canada mean business. We knew that when the temperature dropped by 60 degrees overnight Saturday in the Midwest when record highs in the 60s and 70s becae bitter cold low temperatures in the single digits.

Cold air like this is more dense than warm air, and tends to hug the ground. When warm air tries to move north to re-establish ground, it glides up and over the cold air.

Often when this happens, precipitation breaks out as well. And it's happening now. The cold air invaded the Northeast yesterday and last night, and now a warm front wants to move north and cause a brief warmup up in that part of the country.

Much of the precipitation will start as snow. With the warm air gliding over the cold, eventually the snow will change to rain up above us by several thousand feet. But then the rain will fall into the cold air and re-freeze, turning to sleet, or ice pellets.

As the warm air continues to move north and assert itself, that layer of cold air near the surface will become narrower. So the rain falling into the cold won't freeze until it hits the ground. That's freezing rain, and even more dangerous for driving on than sleet or snow

The ice is smoother and particularly slippery, so roads will be treacherous region wide during this period of transition from snow to sleet to freezing rain.

None of this precipitation is going to be heavy, at least this time. So I'm not too worried about heavy layers of ice piling up on trees and power lines, causing them to snap.

Freezing rain exactly a year ago contributed to a pileup
on this Worcester, Mass. bridge. Photo by Christine Peterson,
Worcester Telegram and Gazette.  

But it only takes a tiny, tiny amount of sleet and freezing rain to make the roads really dangerous.  Last year, there was a 65 car pileup near Worcester, Mass because of less than a tenth of an inch of ice.

And it's tricky. In one spot on the road, it's already above freezing and just raining, so you think you're fine. Then a short distance down the road, it's freezing, so you're taken by surprise.

Then there's the other boneheads out there. You're crawling along, being careful on the icy roads, and the idiots are zooming past you, because they have to do their usual 80 mph, because that's what they always do and they're going to keep doing it.

Then they cause a pileup. I've seen YouTube videos of pileups on icy Interstates because most people are going slow, and a couple morons are speeding, can't stop when they encounter the slow traffic and slam into them.

These speed demons deserve a special place in hell for causing so much harm for other people, and also causing the inconvenience for thousands stuck in the traffic jam behind the pileup.

Why do these speed demons only get charged at most with careless driving?  If they hurt or kill somebody, shouldn't they be charged with murder or aggravated assault or something?

Will one of these icy road speeders please explain to me why it's so necessary to go so fast on glare ice? Do you want to cause deadly crashes? Are you in a murderous mood? Or are you too stupid to be alive, and somebody needs to take your car keys away from you because you are the biggest imbecile on the planet?

Thanks, I had to get that off my chest.

The worst of the icy roads will be this morning and early afternoon in Ohio and Pennsylvania; during the day in New York, and this evening, overnight and Wednesday morning in northeastern New York, and in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

The warm front will eventually win out, and the precipitation will change to rain and end in most areas by Wednesday afternoon.

But it's December. It will quickly get cold again, and we'll have to deal with freezing rain and sleet on many more occasions as the winter progresses.