12/9-12/11/07 REPORTS: Plains to Great Lakes

[Jeff Snyder]

Even in this record-wet year, I didn't expected to see >3" of liquid-equivalent precipitation in a 72 hour span in Oklahoma in December! KOKC has recorded 3.13" of precipitation since 6z Sunday.

I uploaded some pictures I took from the Arcadia/Edmond/northeastern OKC area yesterday at http://www.tornadocentral.com/events/icestorm07.php . Included on that page are links to pictures from others that were posted here and elsewhere. If anyone here doesn't want their link included, let me know, and I'll remove it from the page.

Hopefully we can get rid of most of the ice on the trees before the next significant snow event later this week. At one point today, approximately 530,000 customers (houses, businesses, etc) were without power in Oklahoma. Using the OG&E conversion of 2.5 people per customer, that equates to approximately 1.25 million people without power in Oklahoma. Fortunately, I never lost power at my house in Arcadia, though I noticed a few brownouts. I lost telephone and internet (DSL) a couple of times as well. Of course, this pales in comparison to what others have been and currently are experiencing farther south and east (and very far north into KS/MO/IA now as well).

For those who are through with the event, feel free to post your post-storm pictures and accounts here! Otherwise, for the sake of organization, it would probably be most prudent to continue to use the NOW thread.

 

[Chris Vagasky]

Here are my photos from around Norman: http://news.webshots.com/album/561731657bkljzZ

Longest icicle I measured was over 10 inches long, it appeared as though there was an inch of ice on most trees.

Our power flickered here in Norman a couple times, but never went out, which can't be said for most of the rest of Norman.

 

[Jeremy Ludin]

I should just quit getting excited over anything in my area lol. We did receive around 1/2" of ice, but by early afternoon temperatures rose to mid-30's and started to melt away the glazing. Rather disappointing event although it didn't knock out power this time.

 

[Tom Pastrano]

Here's a link to over 100 pictures I took around Norman.
http://s251.photobucket.com/albums/gg299/stormtrackerdotcom/

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

http://www.extremeinstability.com/07-12-11.htm

I have some up there for now, but will add a lot more when I get back home. From Mound City MO.

 

[Dean L. Cosgrove]

Great coverage of the ice storm on ST. SDS hit me this evening so I traveled to my living room window to shoot the snow side of this event in Curtis , NE
The final bands of light snow were falling as I took these pics .
For fun I included some car lights in my shots

Dean Cosgrove
http://chasetours.com/

 

[Brett Roberts]

Here are just a few of my shots from around the OU campus area Sunday night and Monday morning. The full set can be found here.

 

[Marcus Opitz]

Amazing pictures guys, Those pictures you all are posting look EXACTLY like the Jan 07' storm that hit Springfield.

 

[Joel Wright]

Sure looked like we were well on our way to a damaging icestorm around here, but were saved by temps that unexpectedly (and not forecasted by any model) that rose just above freezing by late morning. About 1/2" thick glaze covered everything before the temps reached 33°. Another 3/4" of rain fell after this, actually helping to melt some of the ice off the trees. Scary to think how bad it would have been if we had stayed at or below freezing like all the models forecasted.

Dodged a big bullet on this one. Nice to have electricity!

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Heading west from Mound City after a fun day at the Squaw Creek NWR(talk about scary trail to the top....surely heard about 100 or so trees breaking all around). I'm out in the open here east of Falls City and am a little surprised to see a big long stretch of snapped pole after snapped pole, no help from trees that I can see. I see at least 18 poles in a row snapped in two. Reminds me of last year a bit.

 

[Mike Peregrine]

Photos taken by my mom of her front yard in St. Joseph today ... looks like I'll be busy this weekend!

 

[David Poch]

Here are some pics I got when I was out and about the last few days.

More can be seen here http://www.oklahomawx.com/siteimages/gallery/index.php?title=December%202007%20Ice%20Storm

David

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

http://www.extremeinstability.com

There are a few words about today on my front page, and a couple other pictures. It was a pretty fun day, though a little tiring. I hope to have this all done better in one long account soon, but I took over 600 photos and it's just going to take forever to do I'm thinking. zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

I did not want to make a 4th day out of this storm, but the sunny skies got to me. I had to head back down. I got to Mound City around 12:30 and things were melting quickly there. I then went to the refuge again, ran up top, to a simply amazing scene. I wish I'd try to document less and just do photography more. I hurry so I can go to other locations, then wind up pissed off I did not do better in each location. Anyway, a couple from today.

The trail to the incline to the top. If you look straight ahead here you can see how covered it was in areas. I'm upset I did not stop down enough to get the ice closest to me in focus. I thought I had it down enough. Of course the invisible dust on the sensor makes me frightened of F9 or more.

Near the top. There were amazing scenes all over the place in there, but I was racing the ice...and my video camera had fallen out of my coat pocket, and I was in a hurry to get back down to find it.

I left there and drove into NE. Things looked the same everywhere till I neared Dawson. I'd say that area around there was the winner in ice accumulations, considering this above was taken late in the afternoon and there'd been some melting happening.

The tall grass reminded me of last year. It wouldn't surprise me if some area right around there had 2 inches of ice before any melting. This survived today, and looking at the forecast, the area ought to stay like it is a for a while longer. I may have to make another trip Saturday and do a better job finding interesting sculptures. I was so tired and ready to be home by the time I found this area. On the way back I thought, if I saw a pink elephant sucking on a big piece of ice out there, I'd have no motivation to take its picture. Now I have about 750 pictures from this storm. Thank god for digital.

 

[Mike Peregrine]

Mike ... it was definitely worth the additional trip. Gorgeous.

So - this ice storm is never going to end, I think. Now, the ice is falling off the branches up in St. Joe, causing the limbs to suddenly catapult, which is breaking the power lines on the way back up. Nice. They closed off the streets around the TV towers and such in KC yesterday for falling daggers.

With the additional snow accumulation from tonight's storm, the repair work is really going to back up. They had been repairing about 5k customers per day (which even at that rate it could be weeks before all the power is restored), but I wonder how this storm will affect the progress. Some folks up there are starting to get pretty cranky (mainly the ones who have forgotten what a good ice storm is really like). The first night with no power is sort of a novelty. The second night it's like 'ok, I can cope.' The third it's like 'someone get this fixed!'

Edit - just heard from a friend of mine that Mound City has power restored as of 10:15 last night.