It's now been a week since the temperature was last above the freezing point here at Memphis. For the last several days the daytime Fahrenheit temperature was in the teens, and it dropped to 1 degree Fahrenheit yesterday morning. Today the high was around 23 or 24 degrees, and I never thought I'd regard such temperatures as a relief of a sort.
During this frigid stretch we have had an ice storm and two snow storms. The second snow storm is falling as I write this. All told, we'll probably end up with a little over a foot of snow. For this part of the country, that's a lot.
Before the heaviest snow started today, I decided that the streets were clear enough to risk a trip out to replenish a few grocery items. There's a grocery store next to the marina where I keep my boat, so I decided to go there and see what kind of shape the riverfront was in.
Not surprisingly, the harbor is frozen up. Here's how it looked this morning:
My boat is the white surfski above two green rec boats at the left side of the photo.
I discovered that the ice is quite thick--probably thick enough to walk on, though I didn't try it myself. I picked up a couple of decent-size rocks and threw them out on the ice. I lobbed them up so they would come down with some force. The ice didn't give at all. I might as well have been throwing them on a concrete slab.
As far as training goes, I'm obviously limited. I'm still doing some "vigorous" hiking out in the snow, and I've also done a couple of extra gym sessions. How soon I'll be able to paddle again remains to be seen. According to the current forecast, the temperature will finally rise back above freezing this Saturday, and get up into the mid to high 50s by the middle of next week. It might take several days for the harbor to thaw, but maybe I can take one of the boats from my garage and put directly on the Mississippi in the interim.
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