Did anyone else get hit by the ice storm this week in the Midwest? I live in Illinois near St. Louis and we got clobbered!! We lost electricity Thursday night and just got it back about an hour ago. My husband and I toughed it out (3 days now)- but it sure did get cold. We ended up losing all the food in the fridge and freezer and one car got a tree limb on top of it and we have about a million tree limbs down in our yard. It looks like Katrina hit us. Most of our large trees have been severed off at the top or split right down the middle from the weight of all the ice. But our house survived it and the pipes didn't break or the roof LOL

Just wondered if anyone else got hit by the storm. I've been off the computer for 3 days and there are a lot of posts since then! I'lll have some catching up to do. I couldn't even do any drawing it was so cold in here.
I'm attaching a couple pics of the ice storm.

I'm so sorry you had to go through that but I'm glad you're ok. A damaged car & spoiled food is nothing like losing your life or even your home!

I've been trying to call my family in that area but no answers. I don't know if the phone is out or what (my dad is too old-fashioned for a cell phone!) Anyway, I'm just thankful you're ok. I'm sure my dad is as he has a large woodstove in his fireplace & had said he'd gotten well-stocked with firewood right before the storm.

All of that is coming here now but the really bad stuff is supposed to stay north of us. I hope it does! The temps have fallen about 15 degrees since mid-morning & it's kind of drizzly out now. We certainly don't need any ice or snow!

Hope you get everything all sorted out and stay warm and cozy!

J

J-Lynn - I'm sure your dad will be fine if he has a fireplace and wood. The phones are a mess - even the cell phones are not working all the time. The power was out to 2 million people in this area. Some won't get theirs back for a week! The lines are down in some areas and just fine in others. We have a fireplace in our house but we have never used it and didn't feel comfortable with it not being checked out first. We are definitely getting a generator before this happens again!

I couldn't really say if your family's phones are out or not. But that is probably the case. The streets are clean so everyone is eating out and going to the mall and the show just to not have to stay in an unheated house. LOL Yes, we are very lucky that we are safe, some of those tree limbs hit the roof and it sounded like they were coming right through it! It was pretty scary for a while.

I hope you don't get even the slightest bit of this storm!

Beautiful pictures, it's to bad they came with hardship. My Aunt and Uncle went through an ice storm in 2000. I think they were into two weeks before there was any relief. They had farm animals to take care of also. The one thing about disaster is you get reminded about how truly wonderful the human race can be. Peaple will do amazing things to help each other out. Glad your safe.
Paulette

Wow Painter, you did get clobbered, didn't you? Great images of the impact of these ice storms.

Living on the coast at the edge of the ocean, ice storms are a way of life here and yesterday we got the tail end of the storm with about 4 hours of freezing rain. Not my idea of a good time as it makes everything so treacherous. But we didn't lose power and the freezing rain turned to rain later but back to snow again today.

I'm glad you came away unscathed by this. Possessions can be replaced, not people. Poor trees, I always feel sorry for them weighed down by the weight of the ice and snapped off. The sun on the ice after a storm like this does turn the landscape into a glittering wonderland however, if there is any good in such a storm.

Sorry to here that painter about the storm .. we did get some but it did not last they called school off friday ....new years we seem to always get a ice storm and its the worst time of the year with all the parties and all going on and people drinking and driving ....glad to hear your ok

Jeanette, I'll bet you do get a lot of this where you live! We have a lot of trees around our house and will probably lose most of them because of this.

Yes, it does make some beautiful pictures. Just like a winter wonderland everywhere you look. With the sun shining it is even more beautiful.

The really weird part of all of this - is that back this summer, there was a vicious storm that came through this area and caused massive devistation - (we didn't get hit) but almost all of St. Louis was out of power - some people were without power for a week or better because of fallen trees! That's 2 bad ones in 1 year. weird.

I will tell you, though, we live out in the country with only a couple of neighbors and they are the nicest and friendliest people you would ever want to meet.

I hope to go out tomorrow and get some more good pics before all of this melts.

would be a great challenge to draw a icey branch .. that one of the life drawings I think a tree branch .

Painter: sorry we sent you the storm. We had it up here in the NW area first. We now have 119 inches of snow on Mt. Baker. I am glad I live in Seattle so it wasn’t that deep. It was a real pain. We have now warmed up to the lower 40’s. I believe the word snowbird has a value at this time.

Geee thanks a lot - we appreciate you sending us some winter. LOL We had 70 degree weather and then it dropped to freezing within a few hours. I don't think I could stand it up there in the winter time. We get enough snow and ice here. hahaha


We have been very spoiled the last several years with extremely mild winters and minimal snowfall.........so I guess we were overdue. I had never experienced a power outage of this length before. I have been snowed in before but never been without power that long. Usually just a few hours. This was quite an experience. There are still over 300,000 people without power in St. Louis area tonite.

Wow I am so sorry that you had to go through such bad weather, however I am fasinated by the storm. I live in Australia and I have never seen ice on a tree. During the storm does it hail and rain?

old dad - yes, it started out as rain (No hail) and as the temperature started dropping, the rain turned into sleet. (sleet is a very fine ice, its not lumpy like hail. A mixture of rain and ice) Then the ground and the trees are covered with sleet (it looks like a snow cone ice when you pick it up). So we have ice with sleet on top with snow on top of that. The weight of the ice on all the branches weighs down the branch until it finally breaks or in some cases it leans over to the ground.

When we just have an ice storm and there is no sleet involved, the rain turns to ice and you can't see it on the street or sidewalks. That's called black ice (I don't know why) but it is very dangerous because you can slip and fall very easily because you can't tell that there is ice there. It is extremely dangerous to drive on.

The evergreen trees are really sad looking because they are so dense. They just bend and droop down and don't even look like trees from all the weight.

There was a guy on the news last night who said that if you could weigh the ice on an average size tree it would probably be 3,000 pounds! So you can imagine why all the trees are broken.

You don't know how lucky you are to not have to deal with it. But we all choose where we live and I'm sure you have things in Australia that we don't have here. Some folks from California once told me that they didn't know how I could stand living in the midwest where there are all those tornados. But yet they lived in California where there were all those earthquakes!

Where abouts do you live in Australia?

The trees are one of the sad parts in this. After that ice storm in 2000 a lot of the trees looked like someone twisted the top half of them off. It's only in the last couple of years that you don't notice it quite so much. I hope the power gets restored soon for the people in St. Louis. I know we sent power line people to Quebec, New York and all the areas that got hit during that big storm of 2000. I'm sure the same is happening in St. Louis.
Paulette

We've had a storm howling around for the last few days - fortunately for us it's just rain but the wind has resulted in loss of power for some (we just had a quick brown-out).

I'm glad you've got your power back - sitting in all your sweaters is not much fun at all.

Thanks for the description, and we have never had anything like that. I live in the state of South Australia, we have four seasons, winter gets down to about 5 deg celsius (40 deg Farenheit) and we are currently into summer with the el-nino effect. Current temperature is 36 deg (96.8) and we have had only 24mm (just under 1")of rain in the past 4 months.
And yes we do choose to live in our enviroment.

I looked up Adelaide on the map and you are really "down under" LOL Its funny the way we perceive how it is where other people live. We have 4 very definite seasons but some parts of the world don't. I would have thought that where you live, it would get VERY cold in the winter as you are closer to the South Pole. But I guessed wrong. I did know that your summer is happening when we are having winter. It sounds like you are in a very arid area with those types of temperatures or is it more tropical and humid? All in all, I'll bet it is beautiful there.

Lol, if South Australia is 'down under', where abouts is New Zealand?

Things are finally warming up here. Had a bloody cold winter, lowest temp must have been about 5ish... You can tell cause all the aucklanders start getting sick at 10 degrees. (I live in auckland by the way, but im not an average aucklander). oh, before people start getting confused, thats 10 degrees celcius.



Bring on Summer!!!

Neat olddad, I have friends in Adelaide. I feel as if I know the place by now lol

Yes 3lansir, NZ is even more downunder Winter? 5ish...hmph wusses...that's postively balmy... Just joking, I know what you mean when you're used to hotter weather. I wish winter here would be only 5C, I'd be in heaven.

We're at -2C (27F) this morning and we've barely started winter, I think the official start is Dec. 21. We are in the most southern part of Canada, what we call the banana belt. We only got a light dusting of snow today. Of course last week we had record temperatures in the 70's. We always say "if you don't like the weather here wait five minuits and it will change."
Paulette

Wow Paulette, your weather is really jumping around. 9 days ago we had a dry thunderstorm that started 70 fires in our state, 3 are still burning and yesterday another one flared up only 10 kilometers away, it got a little scarry but it is burning the opposite direction and there is about 1000 houses in the way before it would reach our house.

Olddad,
The only natural fire we see here is in our heritage grasslands( about a 1/4 mile up the road). Then they have a bunch of firemen and special equipment and light it themselves. It has something to do with keeping the area growing properly. I can't imagine what it would be like to a have a real wildfire threatening you and yours! British Columbia on the west coast (like California) has wildfires all the time. I'm not sure about other areas of Canada.
Paulette