Rant: Ice Storms

[BW23]

I've never really been in the middle of an ice storm prior to last week, but I now hate them. Most people in my city have been without power for a week now...and counting. (Someone I work with will be out of power for at least a month.) The schools will have been closed for a minimum of 7 straight days if not longer. Most trees in town were destroyed. Many homes have been damaged. The number of those taken to the ER has tripled with a few local deaths.

My family and I stayed warm with tons of quilts on beds at night as the house was in the mid to high 40's for a few days.

Many local businesses and low- to middle-wage workers are going to be hurt even further in the pocketbook by not working. And there's the high cost of tree removal (neighbor's paying around $3,000, I believe) that many can't afford.

While not a complete tragedy, it was a serious inconvenience that I hope to never experience again.

[Leroy]

We went through one of these a couple of years ago. We were lucky, we only went without power for about 4 hours. My parents were without power for five days, and some went as long as ten. The thing here was, that after the storm, the temp dropped to below zero. My nephew brought some sort of heater that runs on propane but needs very little ventilation to my folks, and they basically lived in the kitchen, but they pulled through. If anyone is interested, I can repost the pictures.

edit -- I forgot about the 20 inches of snow we got the next day.

edit2 -- What the hay.

[BW23]

They said that there was basically 2-4" of ice around the power lines here. That looks very similar.

The storm here basically snapped power poles in half in many places. It's strange seeing an entire city at night without a single light on and with trees and poles snapped in half. Very eerie.

[Radbird]

I have a buddy who lives in Norman, OK. They had a big ice storm in Dec, 2007. The pics he sent me are .pdfs, so I can't image them, but they look like this:

[Leroy]

[Hudler]

That looks like Ralphie's house on Christmas morning.

[Leroy]

Yeah.

I'm telling you, this was the strangest storm I can recall. It was pretty warm...I'd say 38 or so, but the rain just kept sticking to everything like glue. Then it froze hard and fast. We have a weeping birch in the backyard that was completely bent to the ground. I went out and knocked off some of the ice. On my truck, I took a paint melting gun to the ice on the windows, and each side windows took over five minutes to just break through the ice. It was the strangest thing.

[BW23]

Here's what all the trees in town look like. Well, at least the good ones.

[Leroy]

Oh dear Lord, that is worse than ours.

[BW23]

I knew you'd get that reply in before I could fix it!