Round One of Phase Twelve (snow storms) started Saturday morning with spitting rain, turning to freezing rain, turning to sleet, turning to ice pellets by mid afternoon, turning to thunder snow (that's when it's thundering and lightning and snowing all at the same time) Saturday night.  The crews at our villa were out early Sunday with heavy equipment trying to clear it all.  They first plowed the snow which uncovered the ice.  Then they salted the heck out of everything.  Then they came in with this back hoe (top picture) and literally scraped all the ice off.  The ice was probably over an inch thick!  We usually don't get much ice here.  That is saved for Missouri and Kansas where my brother, Rob Lang lives.

As I've stated before, we've been spoiled the past few years with mild temperatures and minimal snowfalls so I guess we're due.  The Quad City area experienced a low temperature last night of 27 degrees and a high of 32 degrees which caused the wild combination and another 3.3" of snow/sleet/ice combination.

The total amount of snowfall since Dec 1 is 31.6" which is 6.4" more than "normal".  According to the National Weather Service, here's the rest of the story:

CLIMATE REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE QUAD CITIES IA IL                          
419 PM CST MON FEB 26 2007

...................................

...THE MOLINE CLIMATE SUMMARY FOR FEBRUARY 26 2007...
VALID TODAY AS OF 0400 PM LOCAL TIME.

CLIMATE NORMAL PERIOD 1971 TO 2000
CLIMATE RECORD PERIOD 1872 TO 2006

WEATHER ITEM   OBSERVED TIME   RECORD YEAR NORMAL DEPARTURE LAST    
                 VALUE   (LST)  VALUE       VALUE  FROM      YEAR    
                                                   NORMAL            
..................................................................
TEMPERATURE (F)                                                    
  TODAY                                                              
   MAXIMUM         32    259 PM  64    1971  40     -8       36      
   MINIMUM         27    842 AM -14    1963  22      5       11      
   AVERAGE         30                        31     -1       24      
                                                                      

PRECIPITATION (IN)                                                  
   TODAY            0.00          0.90 1998   0.06  -0.06     0.00   
   MONTH TO DATE    2.01                      1.37   0.64     0.98   
   SINCE DEC 1      5.96                      5.15   0.81     4.83   
   SINCE JAN 1      2.93                      2.95  -0.02     3.79   
                                                                     
SNOWFALL (IN)                                                       
   TODAY            0.0          MM      MM   0.2   -0.2      0.0    
   MONTH TO DATE   16.6                       6.6   10.0      0.7    
   SINCE DEC 1     31.6                      25.2    6.4     17.3    
   SINCE JUL 1     31.6                      28.4    3.2     17.3    
   SNOW DEPTH       3                                                
                                                                     
DEGREE DAYS                                                         
  HEATING                                                            
   TODAY           35                        34      1       41      
   MONTH TO DATE 1231                      1015    216      985      
   SINCE DEC 1   3369                      3580   -211     3211      
   SINCE JUL 1   4583                      4875   -292     4233

"Phil" the groundhog says we'll have an early spring.  WE'RE WAITING!!!

For more info about Davenport, Iowa, go to Lucky's website.

Lucky :)