I have been traveling recently so updating my my Coastal Carolina blog has been on hold for a few days. There's been a touch of winter weather through the Piedmont of North Carolina and Virginia. In fact it delayed our return to the coast by a day. Having lived through lots of snow and ice, I'm always of the opinion that the best way to enjoy winter driving is to become a spectator and stay inside. As you can see from the view from our deck in Roanoke, we're used to the mountains. The steep, half mile long hill that you need to negotiate the final almost five hundred feet of elevation before reaching our home has been the scene of many exciting traffic incidents.

During one blizzard they even sent a bulldozer to clear our road. Mostly we worry about ice. As most people are aware, ice is a problem on even what appears to be flat ground. Just imagine what it is like living on a 17% slope like ours. We had one neighbor back his Subaru out of the driveway one particularly icy morning. It completely spun around, and he ended up doing a miraculous job of guiding it down the hill backwards. He went out and bought chains the next day. I think they were only temporary as he and his family are now living in the Wilmington area. We have a seventeen year old AWD Nissan Access that stays in Roanoke. Several neighbors have tried to buy it from us since it is famous for going up and down the hill with chains on all four wheels. It's gone by any number of four wheel drive trucks and SUVs in the ditch. We call it "little Limo." It has rescued many people trying to haul groceries up our hill. Still until I snapped this picture of the cold temperatures on our deck, even in the moutains of Virginia the temperatures were in the seventies on Monday.

Those warm temperatures resulted in some interesting flowers popping up. The recent cold weather has certainly slowed down all that spring growth. I expect the cool temperatures are getting closer to the coast. It's is inevitable that winter will find us if it has found the rest of the country.

I bring up the snow, ice and cold temperatures to the west and north of us because I have noticed in the long range forecasts that there is a chance for some wintery weather in our Coastal Paradise. If the something as long as a fifteen day forecast is to be believed, a week from today, we will be entering in a colder period of weather with highs only in the mid to upper forties for a whole week. Then on January 30, the prediction from the Accuweather folks is " A chance for rain or snow showers in the morning, then a shower possible in the afternoon."

Of course three days later, temperatures are expected to approach sixty degrees Fahrenheit. Next week might just be a good week for visitors to the beach to make sure they have a nice warm gas fireplace to keep them cozy after what looks to be a colder than normal week.

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I'll be talking about it more later, but I have recently accepted a real estate broker position at Bluewater GMAC in Cape Carteret. I'll be happy to help anyone find a spot on the Southern Outer Banks or to market their properties to some of the freezing folks whom I regularly visit in western North Carolina, southwest Virginia, or northern Virginia and DC.

You can visit my REALTOR® page at CoastalNC.org/realtor .

There is no doubt that cool weather has finally found the Crystal Coast. The weathermen are even calling for temperatures to fall into the upper twenties tonight. That is about as cold as I care to see it.

Still I have a hard time complaining. It was warm enough sitting in the sun in my upstairs office, that I opened the window for a few hours. Reports from the mountains around Roanoke, Virginia indicate that we should be thankful for the warmth that we have.

I still have not had to put a coat on to go get the newspaper yet. I also worked on some panorama pictures just after lunch today, and it was still shirt sleeves weather. I can still remember when we moved from northern New Brunswick in eastern Canada to Halifax, Nova Scotia. We found that we could wear tennis shoes for a good part of the winter. We were astonished. We had seen temperatures as low as minus forty degrees on our farm.

I was definitely a lot tougher in those days, but that was twenty five years ago. As one New Brunswicker who visited us in Virginia a few years ago asked, "Tell me again why you moved to Canada." Well we moved for cheap farm land. Fortunately today I can say that we moved to the Crystal Coast for quality of life and a great climate. So far it has been a great experience.