Frost.

Over the winter we had one really good hard freeze, and it happened to be on a morning when I needed to leave the house right at dawn. I came outside and found the windshield of my car completely iced over, something that had not happened to me in over a decade.

Back when I was in high school and encountered a frosty windshield a handful of times, I always solved the problem by pouring a little cold water over the ice and then clearing it with the wipers. This time it just made more ice.

Certainly this was something I was aware could happen, but it was not something I had ever personally experienced. People who have lived in places with actual winter ;earn all sorts of handy tricks for solving this type of problem. They know they can scrape the ice off with a credit card. They own ice scrapers. I have never seen an ice scraper in person. I don't even know where I would buy one. Stores here literally don't carry them.

Eventually my car thawed out enough to be driveable and I made it to work a bit late and recounted my harrowing tale to my coworkers, who were shivering in their jeans and sweatshirts because I'm apparently the only one who owns a winter coat and mittens.

Sneaky Weather.

We live on the coast of California. Once my family took a trip to Disney World. We rented a car for a day and left the resort to go visit a friend in Florida. We also stopped at the beach for a couple of minutes to dip our feet in the Atlantic Ocean. (But not more than that because getting eaten by sharks was very popular that year.)

The day was bright and sunny and beautiful as we arrived. In the time it took us to walk from the car down to the water's edge, something changed.

We went from sunny beach weather to full-blown tropical storm in mere moments. It was incredible. I've also been in the Midwest, where rogue thunderstorms roam the land at high speed and tornadoes are more than rumor. This simply does not happen on the Pacific coast. Our weather never sneaks up on you, and aside from the wildfires and the occasional earthquake, nature is pretty relaxed. Hell, we don't even get real rain here. I mean, yeah water falls from the sky, but it never rains like it means it. Not like it did when we were in Atlanta.