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| The sleet started around 3:40 as
I walked out of school. It was fairly heavy but got lighter as I neared the 401. Once on
the 401 it was pretty light until a sudden burst began to coat the road. |
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| The burst continued and it's full
effect was felt on the 400. Lanes quickly began to disappear under the quick accumulation. |
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| Traffic began to slow. |
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| The 407 was a picture perfect
example of what the sleet had done and was like when falling. |
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| I raced home, grabbed my video
cam and then headed out. The main reason I was out was becuase I needed to get some stuff
in the mail before the post office closed. I used the passenger seat and a wooden box
mount contraption I was working on for chase season as the video stand. Anyway the sleet
was really coming down. |
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| After returning from the post
office I was greeted by another heavy sleet burst and pulled out the video cam to grab
some more shots of it falling. Here you can see the my car as well as some others getting
really covered. |
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| The parking lost must have been
recently salted since there were some pretty big puddles under the sleet but none the less
this stuff was accumulating fast and it was dense! |
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| Heading back out, I felt hungry
and decided a good burger from Macdonald's would hit the spot. On my trip there this
tractor trailer really hit the spot too... the black ice spot. He was in my lane and
having trouble climbing the hill so I decided to follow him over since there really must
have been a huge ice spot. You can also really see the depth of the sleet now. |
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| This shot is much more
interesting as video and not as a still. The sleet was falling really fast here and
bouncing on the table with some considerable height. |
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| Well the sleet fall all night and
the next morning was one heck of an icy mess. My neighbors 2 sons and wife took the good
cars and left the old classic rattle box for the 3rd son who needed to get into downtown
Toronto. Yeah he was mad! Would you like to be seen driving this? LMAO |
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| The sleet reached incredible
depths in places and required plowing pretty much everywhere. |
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| A large mound along hwy 7. |
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| Plowing hwy 7 |
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| I had a school trip planed and
headed downtown to see if it was still on and of course bringing my box mount camera along
(hahaha). The 427 was one of the hwy's which were still in good condition. |
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| Ok it "was" in good
condition. |
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| With the really icy roads there
were accidents all over. Since I was driving it was difficult to film the shoulder where
most of the accidents had occurred but I did manage to get one in. This unfortunate man
spun out several hundred meters in front of me and took the center divide. |
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| Yep.. the roads sucked. |
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| The QEW was actually the cleanest
road in the GTA and had very little traffic on it. Toronto for the most part looked to be
in a hazy plume of ice pellets which I would soon find to be quite shocking. |
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| The streets in T.O looked more
like they did after a snow storm than a sleet storm. When it comes down to it I guess the
raw liquid amounts are what count. The fluff ratio for sleet is 1/3 - 1/5 of what it is
for snow so in fact the amount of ice on the roads was the equivalent to a 30+ cm storm in
the downtown core. When you think a about it a 1 ton vehicle will compact 30cm of snow
into just over an inch and will do similar to 15cm of sleet. So you see what I am getting
eh? |
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| If you think this a nasty just
scroll down! |
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| I had pulled up outside of the
chum city building where the trip was supposed to be held but my media teacher was there
to greet me and say "GO HOME" lol. I got out on the passenger side door to avoid
the mush on the driver side since I was actually dumb enough to wear running shows...
RUNNING SHOES! What was I thinking! |
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| So since I had driven downtown I
took the opportunity to film some stuff so as to add it to my stock collection. Ok ok I
don't have much of a stock collection yet but I am working on it lol. |
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| Yeah there were also some big
puddles. |
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| Not only had sleet fallen but
freezing rain was included sometime overnight in the mix for short period of time. |
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| To give a good idea of how dense
the sleet was I drove over it once to leave (head downtown) and drove over it to put my
car in the garage when I got back. Look no compression from the tires at all... no tracks
only dirt from the road lol. The reason why the sleet had turned into near solid ice was
because it was fairly soft centered due to the fact the cold pool was not deep enough to
fully freeze it. So some of the ice pellets would burst on impact and release their waters
cores. Overtime this bounded the ice pellets how cement bonds gravel LOL. |
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| Here is proof the ice pellets
were soft centered. Oh and if wondering, no my lights don't turn on in the winter so the
ice pellets did not melt lol. |
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| Ok fast forwarding a bit. On
Friday night another burst of sleet occurred. Fortunately though this was highly over
anticipated by the models and the forecasted 15mm of liquid equivalent precip did not fall
lol. However there was another round of plowing and even bigger mounds emerged Saturday
morning. |
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| Finally Sunday afternoon the sky
cleared and gave way to a beautiful sunset. What nice high gloss roofs eh? lol |