Ice storm in Peoria

Last weekend (12/8-9/07), I was visiting my girlfriend, Natasha, in Peoria, IL. Chicago had gotten around 4" earlier, but not Peoria. Saturday night was not quite cold enough for snow, so it was raining. However, it was cold enough to freeze the rain after it had settled on everything. The next morning everyone found their cars covered in a thick layer of ice. I'm glad that I had gotten my ice scraper out of my trunk because it was iced over. I had to break the ice around the edges in order to open it. I had to use the ridged side of the ice scraper to get the ice off my windows. I scraped around the edges and then was able to break off the center chunk of ice on each window. Once I scraped away a border on the windshield, the defroster was able to release the ice from it. So I had one solid piece of ice floating on my windshield that I was able to push right off. (Those are my lovely Bridgestone Blizzak winter tires on my stock rims; I love those tires). Here you can see how thick the ice was. Luckily, I was able to open my front doors without much scraping. My poor windshield wipers were buried in ice. This is what my car looked like Sunday night after I drove 2.5 hrs home. That missing chunk of ice on my hood loudly broke off while I was driving. I was waiting for the entire hood to start chunking off. However, it was the roof that was doing that; very loudly I might add.