Hell Froze Over

Or at least the parts that touched New Jersey did. A fast-moving front arrived in the Garden State earlier than anyone had predicted, causing temperatures to plummet from the 40s into the teens. Starting around 11 a.m., the front's lead edge was producing a fine coating of rain, which promtly froze as temperatures fell. The rain turned to a powdery but intense snow that--when combined with wind--played havoc with visibility.

The end result? So many accidents that the radio stations gave up naming them, and simply wrote off entire highways as a frozen morasses that no one was getting out of. My day job let me out at 2:30, but by that point things were helplessly fubar'd. It took me just over four hours to get home, which is slightly less than my longest commute ever (4.5 hours on Halloween a few years ago).

Of course, all that I wasted was time, and when you look at the big picture--which included so many accidents that there weren't enough state troopers avialable to respond to all of them--that's not a big deal.