something worse than cold rain

I have found something I like even less than running in cold rain.

Ice pellets.

I went for a run this morning wearing shorts, a fleece-lined longsleeve shirt, hat, and gloves.  The Weather Channel claimed it was 37 degrees.  A quarter mile into the run, it began to pour rain.  The wind was luckily at that point not in my face because I was heading due south and it was coming out of the west-northwest.  Half a mile in I started to get pelleted by ice.  Little pellets of frozen water.  They hurt.  By the time I got to the point where I turn to run west (slightly southwest to be precise), it had stopped precipitating.   I turned to run north and the wind wasn’t as bad I had feared (the Weather Channel claimed it was gusting up to 23 MPH).  By the time I turned again, this time heading east towards home, it had started to hail again.  The only good thing was the pellets were very small.  Had they been larger, I would have probably come home covered in ugly welts.

The weather has been very strange today — it will suddenly turn very dark (like a thunderstorm sky), then the sun will come out and everything takes on a sort of strange and eerie back lit appearance.  Then it will pour rain.  I can sometimes hear the ice pellets against my window.  And now the wind is gusting strongly.

Supposedly it is going to snow tonight.  We’ll see.  I don’t think any will stick because the ground is still too warm.  Hopefully it won’t snow because most of the trees here are still holding their leaves and as a result it would be a huge mess if you added heavy snow on top of them.

As much as I hate running in snow and slipping on the ice in the winter, I think I’d take some nice soft snowflakes over these ice pellets …

Tags: cold, gray, Running, winter