We dodged a huge ice/freezing rain bullet in Winston-Salem last Sunday. The early forecast as this storm system was coming together put us on a dicey line, depending on how things shifted, that would lead either to 3 to 5 inches of snow, or a terrible mix of not enough snow, a good dose of sleet, and as much as a quarter inch of ice.
The event started not at 3 am as predicted, but closer to 5:30 am. The tiniest of flakes were just beginning when I got up with Sumner that morning. For a brief while, there was a lovely thick snowfall but by late morning it switched over to sleet. And then came the blustery gusts, forecast to reach speeds of 35 mph.
Those huge front doors in this 1905 house are not especially well-sealed but I was to learn there was more than just cold air drafts to be concerned about. While there is an abundant covered front porch that these doors find shelter in, they were no match for the gusts and heavy sleet, as shown in this short video:
The next photo does not show it well enough, but the height of the sleet pile on the towel I put down was incredible.
It stayed in the low 20s all day and, fortunately, those arctic-level winds were only menacing the house through the afternoon. The whole thing ended with a very, very short period of harmless mist that did freeze on contact but left no significant traces of any glaze, and almost as quiickly it shifted into a few flurries...and then it was all done.
With fears of ice, broken limbs, and downed power lines, fueled by all the local television news speculation (and these were all very reasonable warnings, no doubt), I decided to make the main meal of the day at lunchtime, before the greater threat of a power outage. In the bowls were coconut-red curry braised boneless beef short ribs, served with the curry cooking sauce over quinoa.
"Coconut-Red Curry Braised Short Ribs," by Mark Huxsoll in Cook's Country, December 2021/January 2022, p. 28.
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