Dad just called from northern Indiana…said they haven’t lost power or anything, but it was nasty. This just about the time here in middle Tennessee I was debating on whether to turn on the AC or make do with an open window and a box fan.
FTR, I have had the heat on this year. 
Yeah. Florida is so perfect. You’d never have to close the whole frigging State because of an eighth of an inch of snow on the roads. That would never, ever happen.
-Loki, who may or may not have bitter memories of being told that there was no way to leave the State for Chrismas, back in 1989.
It sucked ass getting into work today, and we’re only mildly icy around here.
I take it you weren’t living there in '91? That one was BAD. Ask your friends and coworkers.
My parents went through that one. (No doubt part of the reason they moved to Florida.) Thousands of trees were downed. Houses were crushed. The homeless population soared. Some were without power for weeks. People died. Emergency workers came from all over the state to help out.
But it was, in a devastating sort of way, beautiful.
KC MO here. We started getting ice early Saturday morning, and it finally stopped sometime last night. Now we are due to get more tonight.
My husband and I have been joking about who has the worst weather–he’s in Boston and I’m here. So far I’m the “winner” hands down.
I’m glad it was (and is supposed to continue to be) just rain here in Pittsburgh. We had snow a couple of times last week, and driving in it sucked for this recent transplant from California…
Those pictures don’t do it justice.
No, the whole experience was far more than those photos, as I understand.
One local news station sold a video of every single broadcast they did about it. It was several hours long, IIRC. Really unbelieveable.
It’s pretty, but there is very little ice on the road at least around me. I’d guess about .5 cm of ice on branches and such. It will melt before the day is out.
I’m going to be just a little bit evil here and say that I spent two hours yesterday basking on the beach with nary a cloud in the sky and a light breeze cooling the 82 degree heat.
And I’m sunburnt.
Neener.
You did see where I said I spent the days after that storm bailing out the basement, because we had no power for the sump pump? Heat, food, and such could all be worked around. That damned sump needed to get emptied by hand before it could flood the basement fully, though.
I didn’t mean that the storm in '91 was minor, but compared to the devastation in the Great North Country Ice Storm, it was small, and had a more localized effect. I had the opportunity to drive through the Watertown area about a month after that storm. There were whole swaths of forest that had been knocked down as though someone had used a giant weed whacker on them. There were stretches of road that had two sets of telephone poles along them - one set, with the wires still attached, just pushed off to one side of the road, and another set now in service to replace the first.
This was more than a month after the storm, and such clean up, and salvage for the wires still hadn’t started because they were still working on restoring power to all areas.
And Watertown wasn’t nearly as badly hit as Canada got it.
I am one of the survivors of the Oklahoma ice storm. I’m OK. My husband and all our pets are OK. After a week without electricity, we are finally back on the grid. My stepfather had a stroke and had to stay in a cold, dark house for a few days, but he survived. My neighborhood looks like a war zone. 100-year-old trees are broken in half. Huge limbs have crushed automobiles, broken through walls and roofs, shattered windows. My beautiful yard is ruined, my house is damaged, my outdoor hot tub and my beloved 1968 Volkswagen are buried in rubble. It is like a war, but there is no enemy against whom to retaliate. I keep thinking that any moment now, we will all wake up and everything will be fine. But in the meantime I’m riding the nightmare, and it looks like a long ride home.
My Yard #1
My Yard #2
My Yard #3
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My Yard #7
The Neighborhood
pinkfreud, I’m glad to hear that you and your loved ones did end up weathering the storm, at least. Which does nothing to change that the damage is heartbreaking, I know.
We got a little bit of it here in Central PA and it sucked. The sidewalks and streets were very slippery. The icicles on the tree branches and electric wires were gorgeous until it got windy enough to make the ice fall, then it took some of the branches and wires with it. We got lucky and didn’t lose power, but my sister-in-law did. We also didn’t sustain damage to either of the cars or the house, in spite of all of the fallen branches.
This morning, I took a look outside and the sidewalks and gutters looked like someone took plate glass, shattered it and scattered the shards about.
Nasty stuff.
Robin
Pinkfreud, those pictures look devastating. Hold it down, though. The community will take care of eachother and you all will be fine at the other end of it.
OtakuLoki, my daughter had no school today. I wonder if city schools will be closed tomorrow too.
Egads. I hadn’t realized. I didn’t think that the roads were all that bad, today. Of course I’ve been distracted - my father had to go in for neurosurgery, so that’s kind of been taking all my attention. (He came through the surgery fine. And the prognosis looks good.)
Just how exactly how far North (and Frozen) are you? Everyone from Ontario eastwards up here is still burrowing out from 20-35 centimetres of the white stuff.
