As I type this, the last in a line of winter weather events is preparing to take hold on eastern Kentucky. This will mark either the third or the fourth one in row, depending on how one classifies such things. The first one was due to hit last Thursday. It was initially forecast to be mainly freezing rain most of the day, with a brief changeover to rain, before turning back to freezing rain and then some snow, ending just after midnight. I stayed home that day, mostly playing all of my online games with daily bonuses, just to make sure that my streaks wouldn't end. I finished reading a book. I also managed to get a notice on the death of Stuart Kaplan. He was president of US Games, a playing card and divination card company. Back in the late 1960s, he went to a German game fair and fell in love with tarot cards. So much so, he bought to North American rights to the popular Rider-Waite deck. He was also one of the people to spearhead to rebranding of the deck to Rider-Waite-Smith, in honor of the artist of the deck, Pamela "Pixie" Coleman-Smith. He would even write a book about her. (Her life is the topic of next week's post, by the way.) He also wrote other books about the tarot. Some were even mentioned in the book I had been reading. Anyway, the weather forecast didn't turn out as expected. Most of the freezing rain didn't show up for most of the day. It was almost all just rain. In fact, the main precipitation was over with by sunset. The freezing drizzle and mist continued for most of the night, barely turning to a sky of spitting flurries for most of the following morning and day. My area ended up with just a little less of a coating of ice than forecast, just not at the time expected. The second winter event mostly bypassed my area. However, it kept the skies cloudy all day Saturday, and it may have caused a slight additional glazing of ice and snow in a few locales. Still, it was nothing much to me, although the very end of the system may have caused a few problems just outside of my regular haunts. The third storm turned out wrong as well. The forecast was for it to start out as freezing rain, followed by a break in the late morning, before changing to all rain for the afternoon and evening. It was then supposed to end abruptly as a brief period of freezing rain quickly turning over to snow before ending. I stayed home, again. I did pretty much the same that Monday as I did the previous time, except I didn't feel the urgent need to get anything done before a possible power outage. The morning freezing rain barely showed up. The afternoon precipitation was almost all rain, which continued into the late night before ending as a little snow. While other places had gotten a fairly heavy layer of ice, my home stayed fine. Unfortunately, the snow didn't end as it was supposed to. It would flurry on and off all day, without any noticeable accumulation anywhere save the very tops of mountains. Again, the forecast was wrong. The current forecast for this last storm in the line is for a small accumulation of snow, before a transition to freezing rain then rain, followed by another snowfall with little accumulation. The rain should melt the first round of snow and make the second round even less significant. However, some models are showing a major event, some with little to no rain. The consensus is more along my prediction mentioned above. My gut says it will be another mostly non-event for me. However, some of those forecasts just seem to want to taunt me with their predictions for heavy snow. Winter events are known for being hard to model, especially along the borders of the system, which I seem to be on a lot lately. However, with so many missteps lately, I trust my own expediences over theirs.
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