Plains ICE Disaster

[Mike Hollingshead]

"It could take 6 months to a year to get all these problems worked out," says Behle.

Posted 6:30 pm Jan 2nd

NEMA spokesman Jim Bunstock says officials are still assessing the damage, but the state will likely pursue a disaster declaration that would free up federal money for repairs.

Posted Jan 3 10:30 am .

Likely? Still assessing? That seems screwy at this point. It seems disaster declarations are issued very quickly after far lesser things.

 

[Paul Austin]

More from TWC, lol. What the hell is wrong with them? Earlier I see stranded cattle footage and massive snow drifts. What is the big caption at the top of the screen? Denver CO .

I've been thinking the same thing. Denver...Denver...Denver...oh Albuquerque...well at least they know that not everybody lives in Denver. Not to diminish the storm effects in those fine cities, but it's like western NE/KS and eastern CO don't even exist. I realize holiday travel (Denver International) is a big deal, but what about the closed roads? And what about weeks-long power outages? That's just pitiful journalism - my two pennies.

 

[Brian Stertz]

I saw some aerial footage of those 12-16 ft. drifts down by Lamar CO. Talk about a historical situation and certainly pretty sad situation for cattle ranchers and people just needing to get from pt. A to pt. B. I saw a road grader in footage where the drift was as high as the cab.

The coverage of this whole storm was just plain inept. 2+ inches of ice and 16 ft. drifts would equal end of the world in the Northeast according to the media bias. When it happens in the Plains, and you get the ole' proverbial media producer yawn. Need to do some dropsondes with camermen !! That might generate some excitement.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

http://www.extremeinstability.com/06-12-31.htm

http://www.extremeinstability.com/06-12-31b.htm

9 pages of ice images. Saving for web is so much nicer on storm shots(less detail). Some of those they'd be all jpg-a-fied if they were under 100k. They are all pretty much pushed to the edge on getting to a low file size...so some might look fairly low quality.

 

[Marko Korosec]

Thanks for these images, Mike! They're outstanding! Surely its a lot of damage...we had similar about 10 years ago, 5-6cm of ice everywhere! Its was heavy raining at -6 for whole night and morning...I still can't believe it was true.

Excelent job and congrats on your awesome ice storm chase!

 

[Dean L. Cosgrove]

Latest Damage Estimates that I was able to find today : 2,900 miles of downed line and 8,300 poles and structures destroyed in SC-NE Nebraska .
Nearly 1000 utility linemen and contract employees working to restore power.

I might as well include a couple pics since I have a few more done now

This one kinda looks like the "middle finger" of ice



About 1.60" of precip before top froze shut



Dean Cosgrove
http://www.chasetours.com/

 

[Aaron Kennedy]

"Mother nature gives us the finger again"

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

More bad news for the area, winds tomorrow (Monday) are forecast to be sustained around 40mph with gusts upwards of 55 maybe even 60. That will surely inhibit workers from continuing to carry out any reconstruction work, and I am sure will even cause some issues to whatever temporary setups they have in place.

Hastings office now has issued a high wind Warning for the area mentioning the impacts that these winds will have on already weakend lines

 

[Francesco]

I was around in 98 when we had an ice storm in quebec. It lasted for a good week. Apparently between 40mm and 100mm of ice fell in the south of the province, being that montreal was smack dab in the middle of it. I was one of the lucky ones that didnt lose power but i remember hearing something like 500 000 people withough electricity, if not more. It was really impressive. The city was shut down for at least 2 weeks.

As for the damages, I believe it cause 3 billion dollars in damages. Really, incredible.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Interesting statement just on the local news for this storm. They said 2,900 miles of lines were down after the storm. 55,000 without power. Now 7,000 without power(using a lot of generators for towns) and 2,600 miles of lines still down. 2,900 to 2,600 means there is a loooong ways to go. I believe this was just for NE. I wonder how many poles there are in a mile. Eeek. And now it is likely to get brutally cold.

 

[Craig Maire II]

Incredible pictures Mike! Hopefully the power is back on down there by now!

 

[John MacKay]

Nice pictures Mike and Dean!

The worst I've seen was the ice storm on Jan. 2005 (I remember power going out before halftime of the national championship game that night). My dad and I went out and found we were the only area in town without power (went to my aunt's house the next day), and we saw tons of flooding (flood warnings were posted ahead of the major cold air). When the cold air came in the early morning hours, an instant 1-1.5" of ice covered the roads (everything else was already ice).

This looks at least 2 to 3 times worse than that one (people were without power for up to 2 weeks on the Jan. 2005 storm). I find it surreal that I was at a bowl game in Houston and we left after the game instead of waiting until the morning. If we didn't do that, we would have been dodging tornadic storms (I usually want a weather radio when in that situation). Then hearing how many places had 12" of snow with 12 more hours of snow after that. I remember seeing the pink line on radar, but almost no one in the KS media said anything about the ice, just the snow.