SNOWY IRELAND

When we got back to Ireland we discovered that they had a couple inches of snow.  In fact, it has been pretty cold here for the past couple of weeks.  Since we got home, it has snowed a couple more times. We still don't have a whole lot of snow, but the snow we do have is causing problems.  It wouldn't be a problem in the US or in an area that is used to snow.  Even though Ireland is on about the same lattitude as Alaska, it doesn't really get that cold here.  Most of the time in the winter it doesn't get much colder than about in the 30s.  Even right now - about 2 pm in the afternoon - it is 34 degrees.  One problem is that they don't have road graders here.  So the snow stays on the road and just gets packed down.  Another problem is that the sun doesn't shine that much.  Even though it is cold, if the sun would come out it would help melt the snow a bit.  The other problem they have here is they don't have much sand - or "grit" as they call it.  So it just snows a bit more each day and now the streets and sidewalks are very snowy and icy.  No one even has a flat shovel to clear their walks.  Now they are spreading "grit" sparingly because they are running out of it.

I saw on the news that England and Europe are getting it worse than we are.  I know that school has been out a couple of days this week.  I went to the grocery store today.  I had heard that we may have water shortages due to pipes freezing and breaking.  I was going to get some bottled water.  I guess everyone else saw that on the news too, because they were almost sold out of the 2 liter bottles of water.  With the water I already had, I have about 7 two-liter bottles.  :0)

I talked to our RS president last night.  She lives about an hour from our church.  She said she hasn't been to church for 2 weeks because of the snow.  There's another lady from our church that lives up the street from us.  She told me she hasn't been to church in 3 weeks.  I'm glad that my husband only has to drive 1 mile (one road) to work.  Poor Ireland, they went from flooding to freezing. :0+

PS.  I realized I never posted this, so I'll add a post script.  Sunday night it started raining - not snowing.  We realized that the winds must have changed and it actually warmed up a bit.  It literally rained away most of the snow!  Monday night the wind started blowing, and we got a bit more rain, but no snow.  Today - Tuesday - it is 37 degrees and cloudy, but no rain or snow yet.  The forecast said we were supposed to get more rain/or snow through Wednesday, so maybe this is a good sign that we won't get any at all. :0)