Holy Black Ice...Batman!

You probably can't tell from these photos, but between the newly applied pavement and the cold air above is a thin layer of ice. The reason only a patch of ice and not ice covering the entire road is because this is where my car was parked. When I parked my car, the entire road was covered by ice. After a few hours of direct sunlight and the rest of the road cleared.

But not that little patch.

I grew up in Utah. It snows in Utah. It gets cold in Utah. Basically, we have winter weather. And because I grew up here, I learned to drive in winter weather. I didn't like snowstorms through which you could barely see, but I drove through them sometimes. There was one thing that, no matter how much experience you have with winter weather, I avoided whenever possible...

Black ice.

That's bad stuff. A few years ago we had some frozen rain, which is one way to create black ice. The other day we had some slushy rain/snow hit around 11pm. Then the cold came in and froze the water. Luckily, none of us had to go anywhere in the morning so we could wait until the ice was gone to safely drive.

One thing I've noticed as I've gotten older is people are worse at driving in the snow than they used to be. This isn't an "old man" rant...well, it kind of is, but I have a theory. There's a couple of reasons why I believe this to be true. First, there are more all-wheel drive vehicles out there. It used to be you drove a two-wheel drive car, or a big 4x4 truck of Jeep. Those truck/Jeep drivers knew how to handle snow. Cars are smarter now--they do more thinking for the driver than they used to do. And second, I think communities are better at clearing the streets than they used to be. Back then we'd drive in snow, even unplowed streets. Now, I don't remember the roads being as snowy because they clear them quicker.

What does this have to do with black ice? I don't see it as much anymore, which is a good thing, but also, we're less prepared for bad conditions. Maybe that's why I noticed to last week...because it's rare.