Scenes from the Ocracoke deep freeze of 2018....
Early morning, Thursday, January 4th, 2018
Now that the end is in sight, I'm finally posting photos from the past five days of snow and ice on the island. I've been too cold to do it before that, or at least that's my excuse. The cold puts us all in limbo, like an upside-down hurricane evacuation, when it seems we should have time to get things done, but the talking about and thinking about and looking at the weather and dealing with the consequences (frozen pipes, icy steps, drafty house) consumes all that free time. That, and napping. There's been a lot of napping around here.
But we did venture out a few times to document the rare and amazing icy sound and harbor, and the snow drifts on the sand. Wind, rain, snow, ice – it all makes Ocracoke even more beautiful.
Today, temperatures should crawl back up into the mid- to high-40s, which is chilly by Ocracoke standards, but after the past five days, it will feel like a heat wave. By Thursday, we'll have balmy 60-degree weather, and all this ice will melt into our dreams.
Thursday morning at the lifeguard beach
Snowdunes! Thursday morning at the lifeguard beach
Thursday morning at the lifeguard beach
In the village Thursday morning
Ocracoke United Methodist Church
Thursday morning at NPS parking lot
Ocracoke's sledding hill – the kids came later after enjoying their cozy snow day morning at home.
Howard Street on Thursday morning
Ocracoke School principal Leslie Cole was sweeping snow (who owns a snow shovel on Ocracoke?) and salting the steps at the library on Thursday afternoon. This is one of her many duties as principal -- she didn't get a snow day!
Deputy Blackburn Warner scraped the ice off the ramp at the Ocracoke Library and was helping Leslie make the school campus safe.
On Friday, I didn't venture farther than my own yard for photos!
Ice patches in the harbor on Sunday morning. This was at the Community Store docks. The ice was icier in other spots around Silver Lake.
The icy sound meets frozen marsh grass
Frozen docks and marsh grass along the sound off North Pond Road
In Silver Lake Sunday morning
Silver Lake, off of the Pirate's Quay docks
Max Elicker shows how thick the ice was in the sound by Oyster Creek.
