Ice Storm- OK/MO/AR/TX/KY

[Justin Teague]

We had around 2 inches of sleet and 1/4 inch of ice at my house in Tulsa. Greg McLaughlin and I shot quite a bit of video around town. I am working on posting some of the video to our website. Be sure to watch the video of the guys on 4 wheelers from Jan 27th!

www.wxstream.com

 

[Simon Brewer]

I made a trip to Westville, OK early Wednesday morning: I drove most of the night leaving Norman ~11pm Tues night and arriving in Westville ~7:40am Wed morning. There was ~2 inches of sleet in Norman when I left, hit much deeper amounts of sleet east of Seminole ~3-4 inches deep. Around Warner, OK I noticed heavy ice accumulations; I made it a point to stop in Warner on the way back to Norman later on Wed. Ice accumulations were relatively light in Sallisaw, OK where I turned north on SR 59. Ice accumulations steadily increased as I progressed NNE on 59.

It appeared there was ~1.5 to 2 inches of ice accumulations in the Westville area. Metal surfaces and some trees accumulated ice more efficiently than other surfaces. I even witnessed small amounts of ice accumulations on horses and cattle.
Here are some pics, but more can be seen at this link:
http://www.stormgasm.com/1-27-09/1-27-09.htm

 

[Brian Emfinger]

I went up to Westville today too as part of my job duties. Definitely was pretty bad in town. Pics from today are here.

Drive around video from Westville - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFrj2v0z4UI

 

[Stephen Levine]

I have posted a couple photos up on my web site from yesterdays ice.
www.joyfulstormhunting.com

Much of our area had hoar frost in the trees this morning due to fog with below freezing conditions. It was a true winter wonderland, with about 1/4 inch of thick frost on just the north side of everything, as well as on the grass. It was white like fresh snow, and real thick almost like styrofoam.
Conditions like this are extremely rare here in the DFW area.

It had melted from my neighborhood quite quickly, but still greeted me at my day job worksite this morning. Had no time to take photos.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Here are a couple pictures for now. Have a bunch to do yet. I really wished I had just slept early that first evening then woke up and went out really early, because the city looked crazy at night where there were still lights. Then by morning there was really thick fog(2 blocks visibility) and the best ops were then, for sure, whenever you could get a car going down the dark areas. I didn't realize that until about 1 hour before sunrise, not long after I'd went back out. The residential areas in darkness, really thick fog, and trees and powerlines blocking roads or half the road, made driving around rather dangerous...so I didn't look too terribly hard for a good spot to shoot. Wound up in Springdale's cemetery later that day, which was well, all messed up. I didn't search the place out, just kind of wound up there. The sun mostly pissed me off there, refusing to fully come out till at least after I left between 1 and 2 pm. There was snow in that freezing fog that morning too, and listening to the radio, I wasn't thrilled at the idea of trying to got east on the highways looking for more ice. Figured any place I'd find might not have more than this city/area anyway, so just stayed there for the last day before driving back.

Oh yeah, and here is where the Blazer stopped after the 75 mph slide of joy off what I thought was still dry pavement. If you look at the tracks way back there you can see where it was coming in already sliding with the left side forward. Then it came back around till it was sliding backward, then that last switch is where it came back around to how I am at the end. The last half wasn't bad, the first half sideways going that fast sucked.

 

[Tony Perkins]

Brian, I'm not sure I'd want to be anywhere near that tower! I assume that is ice falling off the guy wires that we are seeing in the air?

 

[Brian Emfinger]

Brian, I'm not sure I'd want to be anywhere near that tower! I assume that is ice falling off the guy wires that we are seeing in the air?

Most of the ice was falling from the tower and I was mostly upwind. I didn't get there in time to get the big long pieces falling off the guy wires... although I did get to witness it on Tuesday morning at work when our tower's (40/29 tv) ice began melting. It wasn't nearly as cool as that good ice falling from tower video.

Also today I went up on Cavanal Hill for my job (they call it the highest hill in the world as its 1999 feet above ground level - its about 2400 feet above sea level). The ice accumulations were the most I have seen through this whole mess. There was still over 2 inch ice accumulations at the top and that was after being above freezing yesterday and through several hours of quick warming and melting today. Here are a couple pics from that and more is on my website now.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

All are up now here on 6 pages....

http://www.extremeinstability.com/09-1-28.htm

 

[Robert Dewey]

Wow, awesome photos Mike... I really like the ones in the cemetery, especially this one: http://www.extremeinstability.com/stormpics/2009/2009_01_29_7814.jpg

Lots of damage, that's for sure.

 

[Bart_Comstock]

I have a few shots up now in my Severe Studios gallery and will head out tomorrow with the camera to get some clean up shots. The tree damage in and around west Rogers, Ar and Springdale, Ar is incredibly impressive. there isn't a single tree left in much of Springdale that still has its top branches left or escaped serious damage. If it weren't for the lack of structural damage I would have guessed a hurricane had rolled through town.

Anyways here are some of my shots: http://www.severestudios.com/photos/gallery/v/Bart_Comstock/WinterWx/09icestorm/

Nothing too impressive but still worth a look or two, lol.

 

[Brian Emfinger]

I combined stuff I shot while working with some pictures in this youtube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUSoqm-HoYE

Its kinda long at 5+ min. There are a lot of shots in there that never made it on air and tower ice falling vid is towards the end.

also stumbled upon this transformer exploding.. crazy stuff there (it blows at :31 in):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sngiPk6sTBs

 

[Eric Flescher]

much has fallen in Kentucky and Arkansas

Boy we are lucky here in Kansas.

ABC news showed all the downed limbs and the ice in both those states.

Hope you all in these states are doing okay

 

[beaudodson]

Terrible damage here in West KY. I have never witnessed an ice storm like this. We have thousands of power poles down, trees down, lines down. Many people are still without power. I feel fortunate to have power and heat.

Some of our family is being told that it will be four to six more weeks until power is restored.

I blogged on the event here (lot of photos).

http://blog.usawx.com/2009/02/05/february-5-2009-historic-ice-storm-hits-western-kentucky/

Some of my photos are on the Paducah, KY NWS Site as well.

http://www.stormreports.org/beaudodson_icestorm1.htm

http://www.stormreports.org/beaudodson_icestorm2.htm

http://www.stormreports.org/beaudodson_icestorm3.htm

http://www.stormreports.org/beaudodson_icestorm4.htm

http://www.stormreports.org/beaudodson_icestorm5.htm

I have new respect for people who live in hurricane country.

Beau

 

[Jerry Prsha]

That's just amazing Beau. One thing I noticed is that in just about every image people are smiling too. That says a lot about who you are.

We had two wind events roll through here a couple of years back taking out power and trees all over the St. Louis area. Some power was out for a week or more but people weren't pinned down like you were. That has got to be scary.

Thanks for sharing...

 

[Heidi Farrar]

Terrible damage here in West KY. I have never witnessed an ice storm like this. We have thousands of power poles down, trees down, lines down. Many people are still without power. I feel fortunate to have power and heat.

Some of our family is being told that it will be four to six more weeks until power is restored.

I blogged on the event here (lot of photos).

http://blog.usawx.com/2009/02/05/february-5-2009-historic-ice-storm-hits-western-kentucky/

Some of my photos are on the Paducah, KY NWS Site as well.

http://www.stormreports.org/beaudodson_icestorm1.htm

http://www.stormreports.org/beaudodson_icestorm2.htm

http://www.stormreports.org/beaudodson_icestorm3.htm

http://www.stormreports.org/beaudodson_icestorm4.htm

http://www.stormreports.org/beaudodson_icestorm5.htm

I have new respect for people who live in hurricane country.

Beau

Still without power here, and we're hearing the same kinds of horror stories about when the power might come back. I think we'll be very lucky if we have it in a week or two. There are still power lines across the road less than 100 yards south of my house, with at least one pole and a line snapped behind the neighbors' place... the National Guard was on our road clearing debris on Sunday and I saw their HUMVs parked outside the cafe in town Monday. The Missouri bootheel got hit VERY hard as well. They're talking about needing to totally re-make the grid in some large parts of the bootheel and Greene & Clay Co. AR. Further west, our issues are more on the level of accessibility combined with the couple thousand poles that need to be replaced in our co-op area. It's going to be very, very tough for the utility workers to get in to the trouble spots in the Ozarks.

... We just got our generator working yesterday It had a busted part that was not discovered until the Sunday before the storm hit, and we expected the replacement would be here last week. It wasn't, and as a result, we went 9 days without any power at all. Still no running water.

The worst damage we had was that huge tree that fell across our driveway. We had several huge parts of trees in our back yard fall, including half of an elm that crushed our dog's outdoor run (he lives inside with us anyway) and a huge maple limb that crushed the area where we used to keep our chickens when we had them (lol). We're thankful there was no major structural damage. ... It's incredible to see the damage to the forests. It looks like all of north Arkansas was given a hair cut, as the tops are out of just about every single tree - no joke. I assume the same is true in KY.

Interestingly, on Feb. 6th last year, I was reporting on another federal disaster that hit close to home in a literal sense. It's kind of hard to distinguish where the tornado damage path begins now, especially if someone had never seen the path prior to the ice storm.