It's 30 degrees and raining. Our driveway and the street out front are a sheet of ice.

And no snow to show for it. Glad I covered my palm trees.

NW Blount County reporting in... it is snowing right now!

From the "unintended benefits of global warming" department, was it a glorious day in Blount Co. or what? It was 80 degrees at our house earlier today. On December 11th. At 5PM, it was still 72 degrees at Springbrook Park. A few more photos after the jump...

There was this weird substance dropping from the sky yesterday afternoon. It was wet and cool. The plants seemed to reach up and embrace the substance. What a pleasure.

According to The Maryville Daily Times and the National Weather Service, 1.91 inches of the substance accumulated at the Knoxville airport. Living about a mile away from the airport, as the crow flies, we only received 1/4 inch. We are still happy and our plants are happy.

What is it, though, with the people that continue to water their yards every day? Do they not read the paper? Do they not care about the community?

The drought is taking its toll on Blount County's water supply. Maryville and Alcoa get most of their water from Little River, and Little River is running at historic lows.

Maryville uses nearly 6 million gallons of water per day, most of it from Little River. (They are currently purchasing about 1 million gallons per day from the South Blount Utility District, which gets its water from the Tellico Reservoir.)

Alcoa's Little River intake is downstream from Maryville's. According to news reports, Little River's flow this week was about 42 cfs at the Maryville intake, and about 28 cfs at the downstream Alcoa intake. It is currently about 31 cfs at Townsend, as compared to a springtime flow of around 300 cfs.

Having waded, tubed, and fished Little River for about 40 years or so, it's about as low as I can recall ever seeing it. Fishing is out of the question, and so is tubing for the most part.

The bottom line is, everyone needs to conserve. (We've only watered our lawn once in about the last month. We're watering one more time tonight, though, before mandatory restrictions are put in place Monday morning. So, yeah, we're part of the problem, but our lawn is also nearly a complete loss from trying to be responsible all summer.)

Click read more for more photos of Little River taken yesterday...

The Maryville Daily Times reports that the City of Alcoa will hold special emergency meetings to consider a water use restriction ordinance.

The first special meeting on the ordinance will be at 9:30 AM at the Municipal Building. The second meeting will be at 9:45 for a second reading of the ordinance and presumably a vote. We're guessing it will pass.