Five Mississippi--Break

A little (lot of) wind, a little (fair amount) of snow, a little (light) ice, and a whole LOT of cold.  My face went numb just pulling the plane out in the gusty icy winds when the sun was out this afternoon.  It was 60 degrees in Mississippi.  I kind of hate coming back from that.  We shot an approach back into Kokomo, and it was lower than expected.  The loose snow on the ground plus the snow in the air reduced the visibilities quickly, and being night you couldn't really see the pockets of clouds.  What was supposed to be VFR ended up going down to a mile and 700' while we were in the middle of the approach, which at the time he was just doing for the practice.  We had the airport in sight, were under the clouds, visibilities were fine, did the approach anyway, and poof, we were in it and having to actually do it.  The winds were 19 gusting to 31 knots, with a bit of crosswind, and blowing snow all over, and D said "Good grief, this is getting ridiculous" as we were coming down final, which made me laugh.  All good practice, on why not to cancel an IFR clearance too soon, on shooting an ILS with a big crosswind, on a night circle to land approach, on all sorts of stuff... Putting the plane away, I don't know what the wind chill was, but it was UGLY out there.  Ugly.  "I don't want to play any more" kind of ugly.  This will be the last trip to MS for a couple of weeks, so that'll give me some time to catch up on a few things too.

When I got home tonight around 11:30 pm, Kaylee had left me a care package on my pillow, of some chocolates.  I thought that was sweet.  :)  A lot of schools are already on a 2-hour delay because of the wind chills for tomorrow.  So far Kaylee's school is not listed as one on a delay, but I hope they do, because I could use the sleep-in myself.  ;)

A problem with getting home from a flight at 11:30 pm, particularly a flight where you had to really pay attention and monitor and work at it a bit, is that you're too wired up to get to sleep when you need to.  So it's 1:40 a.m. and I'm still not tired.  But I have to be up in 4.5 hours to get Kaylee ready for school, and I'm gonna feel it then...