Last week, something white and frozen fell from the sky and from the way some folks reacted, you would have thought the sky itself was falling.

I was out taking photos of a basketball game in Nordheim when my cell phone rang.

My wife wanted to make sure I was safe because she had heard there was a bad accident and because of the winter storm, local schools were closing early.

"Winter storm?" I asked. "They are letting out school early because of the winter storm?"

Sure enough, as I was driving, I noticed that tiny little pieces of sleet were hitting the windshield with a "tick tick tick" sound, but it was obvious that the sleet was melting the instant it touched the pavement.

"You’re kidding, right?" I asked her. "It’s 45 degrees outside. Water doesn’t freeze till we drop to 32."

"No, I’m not kidding," she answered. "They really let school out early."

Now, I know this is south Texas and folks here react… well… differently to winter weather than folks who live in colder climes, but to me this seemed to be taking "erring on the side of caution" to new and unprecedented levels.

Later that evening, my daughter and I had plans to attend a special event at City Hall in Kenedy. I wanted to get some pictures for the newspaper and my daughter wanted to see Santa.

When we arrived on the front steps, there was a note on the door letting us know the event had been cancelled due to bad weather.

"You’ve got to be kidding!" I thought, noting the temperature was still about 45 degrees and the sleet had stopped several hours earlier.

Some other folks arrived at the same time and read the note. They just turned around and went home.

Having seen more than my share of truly hazardous winter weather conditions, maybe my perspective is somewhat different than others.

In Canada, for instance, I know that it can be 20 degrees below zero, heavy snowfall and people will go out to the corner store for a newspaper and scratch-off tickets.

I’ve seen it firsthand.

They’ll do that every day for weeks on end. Up there they really don’t let "winter weather" prevent them from going to work, school, the movies or anywhere else. For them, "winter weather" is "normal" weather as they have it for about eight months each year.

But down here, it’s different.

Just the slightest coat of ice or snow on city streets in Austin or San Antonio will send vehicles by the thousands careening out of control, crashing into one another.

Why is that?

I think the answer is obvious.

Practice makes perfect and folks in Northern Canada have lots and lots of practice driving on snow-covered, ice covered roads.

They know to slow down.

Ice and snow on south Texas roads is a relatively rare occurrence and so lots of Texas drivers fail to realize that slowing down might be a good idea when there’s a coat of slippery ice or snow on the road.

Even though Texas often gets heavy thunderstorms that reduce visibility significantly, many times I find myself dumbstruck by drivers who will whip around me in a heavy downpour at speeds of 80-plus MPH!

They’ll do this in heavy fog, as well.

I’m not sure the average driver realizes how important it is to slow down in reduced visibility. Because of my job, I have seen numerous horrifying vehicle accidents caused by excessive speed under reduced visibility and so for me, the message "slow down, be safe" has really sunk in.

Often it seems folks either under-react, or over-react to given weather conditions, but I think the key to keeping everyone safe is in reacting appropriately.

The sleet was pretty cool, though.

Nowhere near as cool as the white Christmas of 2004, but it was a reminder that every once in a while it’s possible for frozen water to fall out of a south Texas sky.

Many have called the white Christmas of 2004 a "once in a lifetime" experience.

They may be right, but we sure have had "once in a lifetime" flooding events that have happened a whole lot more often than "once in a lifetime."

Dare we wish for another white Christmas?

My daughter is counting on it.

She seems convinced that it’s going to snow this year because we got "skipped" last year.

Now, it’s our turn again, her four-year-old logic tells her.

I hope she’s right.