Heavy ice storm, downed trees and power off

It’s 11.55am, 12Dec2008 now.

It’s been raining since yesterday. When I got off work, I saw ice forming on the roads, on the road signs, and on the trees, it wasn’t that bad anyway, I just thought it’s special, something I’ve never seen before.

At night at home, it’s still raining outside, I was doing almost nothing in my room. Around 10pm the lamp starts flickering, internet went off and on. That was the first time in US that I experience power problem. The lamp was on and off for a few times, and I thought I should just go to bed. So I tucked in and went to sleep.

Half way in the wee hours of morning, when I was still sleeping, some horrible sound woke me up. Something’s just struck my roof I thought. I was looking up my ceiling in dark, and saw no holes, and thought it’ll be fine, so I went back to sleep.

Half an hour later alarm rang and I woke up. As usual, the first thing I do after waking up, is to close the window. And when saw the window outside, I yelled softly, “oh boy…”

Trees are freezing in front of my window. The whole bush behind my house, is frozen. All the branches of the trees are covered with crystal clear ice, and it’s still raining. I took my camera and snapped some shots, feeling very amazed. At the far end back, I saw bigger trees are having problem staying up, it's too heavy at the tree top because of the huge amount of ice formed. I guess the loud noise that I heard, was caused by one of the fallen branches, it was just too heavy for them to hold the ice, so they just broke off.

I looked up at my ceiling again, hoping that my roof is okay.

On my way out to the bathroom, I stared at one small glass window on the high top of my house, it’s fine, no holes, no break. So I washed up, brushed and prepared for work. And then again, lights started to flicker, the power wasn't stable.

Anyway, I still drove out to work. And when I drove out of my garage, the whole world outside was like an ice world. Except of the roads, everything else was covered with ice. “Oh my god,” I thought again.

And at the junctions, we saw a number of emergency cars, look like the fire department or some other cars that go rescue something. I drove slowly, and there’re branches of trees laying down on the road, blocking our way.

The wire for power, the lamp posts, the sign posts, the trees, the curb on the road, the grass, the everything…are covered with ice. Maybe power cut off because of the power wire downed by ice.
I drove carefully to work, on the highway I was driving at 50miles per hour (not kilometer per hour), when I normally could drive up to 70 or 75miles per hour. Electronic sign of “Winter Driving Condition, Drive with Caution” was seen on the road shoulder.

Some of the roads are flooded with stagnant waters, and more trees are blocking my way to work.

Then I reached office, and started to hear people talking about power cut off. I then realized that my area was better, some of the other people had no power since 9pm last night. They could not take hot shower, as there’s no heat, you can't take cold shower here, you'll freeze to death, and the whole house could be cold if the heat is run by electricity.

I looked up on the internet news…it’s a state of emergency declared. Local government is urging people not to travel and stay at home. A party in my company has just been cancelled because of this. A lot of people are powerless and they are setting up temporary shelter for the needy people.

I was a bit stunned to realize that it’s the worst ice storm since 1998, according to the news online.

I’ve never experienced ice storm at all, and I have absolutely no idea if the ice forming this morning is very serious, or is it very normal… and it's not until I heard and saw those news that i realised it's...really bad.

I just hope that the trees are not going to fall onto my house tonight…and we will have our power.

With all the news and updates, I suddenly feel that it’s not so fun…

Ice storm.



Venus