Indeed; I too, live in suburban Chicago, and we’ve had a couple of nasty ice storms here in the past. In addition to the ones that Skilling mentions in that article, we had one in '96 or '97 that took out a lot of power lines – we were without electricity or heat for two days.
We had one in 1998 that actually collapsed main power transmission line towers from the weight of ice on the towers and power lines. January 1998 North American ice storm - Wikipedia
We were without power for only a few hours, but it was weeks before some people had their power restored.
The Texas Tribune is singing Hallalujah – premature, if you ask me. It’s only Feb
4, FFS. The words “so far” should be in that headline.
Looks like the doom and gloom they were predicting won’t happen. Temperatures have stayed well above freezing. There may be a problem tonight after the rain stops if the roads are still wet.
Where are you that temps have stayed above freezing?
Thank you for doing that. I have three neighborhood cats I tend to. Two of them are in my spare room now. I haven’t seen the third since Wednesday. I assumed she was holing up somewhere yesterday and would come around today but she hasn’t. She is much more independent than the other two. I just hope maybe someone took her in. I’m really worried about her.
It’s very quiet today. There are still 120,000 customers without power, about 30% of the city. And that’s not going to improve for days, for some it will be weeks. At least it won’t be as cold for the next two nights. The original forecast for tonight was 13 degrees and 14 for tomorrow night but that changed to 20 and 22. Next week all temps should be above freezing. I feel so bad for people who don’t at least have a gas stove or fireplace. I have neither so I’m really glad I still have power. Hotels are all booked.
This was bad but not the worse. That one was in 94 when over 1/2 of the city had no power, some for a month. I had been thinking about getting a generator. That idea has moved up on my post-retirement to-do list.
Miss Not Ours insisted that she needed to leave our house today. It is still pretty cold, but she wanted out. She came right back in about three minutes later. The next time, it was ten minutes. I’m keeping the back door light on in case she changes her mind, but I have a feeling she finally went home.
If she did go home, I will have some choice words to say about anyone who lets their pet out in weather like this. I will never understand them.
While winter’s obviously not over yet, it was always very unlikely that we were going to get a winter storm on the magnitude of what we got last year. Unfortunately, by playing up how bad things could get and raising the specter of another statewide blackout, the media ended up making it look like Abbott and his cronies have vastly improved the grid (when it was never under any significant strain). He’s already crowing about how the grid survived this weather due to legislation he got passed last session, even though most of it doesn’t take effect for years.
I still blame it all on Abbot. Of course my opinion means nothing to that slimeball, but there it is.
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She may have escaped. Some cats are very hard to keep in.
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I let mine out today. One was back in five minutes; another in fifteen; the third in about two. All of which I was expecting, and was ready to let them back in.
I hope Not Ours is OK, though; and that you see her again, so that you’ll know.
DFW area here. Everything’s fine. We spent Thurs/Fri watching the sleet, warming by the fire, and daring each other to jump into the hot tub. The only hiccup was my daughter losing power at her apt a few hundred miles away. Her power’s back on now and after an evening in the cold I have a new convert.
Re: convert. To most people, my wife and I are somewhere on the “prepper” scale, and my daughter continues to roll eyes at our stores of water, fuel, generators (yes, plural), wood and everything else. Last year we had few problems in the great snowpocalypse but she was unaffected by it at all. This year, watching her apartment get colder, the sky darken, and unable to get out and or cook anything she got more and more nervous. Late Thursday night my new convert wanted to know everything about generators, portable power, water storage, and off-grid heating heating and cooking. I gained several new acolytes following last year’s kerfluffle, but I expect she’ll be my single new “resilience” student this year.
I remember that one. Ended up in a hotel because the home power was out. Of course ice storms do happen up here but with no regularity. I wasn’t born in 1948 and was a young un in the 60s.
Well of course they happen, but not frequently. I’m old but I wasn’t born in 1948 and was just a kid in the 1960s. Point being they don’t occur every winter and we know how to deal with them.
So four days after the storm and now I’ve lost power. It’s been over two hours so it wasn’t just a reset for a nearby outage. (There are still some 60,000 outages.) I’ve got some lanterns so I’ve been reading but the temp in the house is 62 (temp outside is 26) and even though I’m not sleepy, I’m thinking of going to bed. I just packed up everything from the refrigerator into a plastic tote and put it on the porch. That’s a first for me. I’ll move it to the car in the morning if necessary. I sure hope it won’t be.
We ended up having freezing rain that turned to snow. I hesitated plowing with my gf’s Arctic Cat, because I’d be scraping snow off and exposing ice.
While I played around with the Cat I discovered that just driving up and down our lane did a great job. The knobby tires compressed the snow but didn’t leave a slippery surface.
I was in bed but still awake when the power came back on. It was out exactly four hours (1 - 5 a.m.) so I think it was a planned outage while most people were asleep and refrigeration would not be affected. I wish I’d had a heads-up about that before I put my food on the porch. 
I’ll be less concerned if it happens again tonight. There are still about 60,000 outages.