posted
There was an awful ice storm recently, and I was wondering if there is anyone to check up on.
If I recall correctly, AnnaJo went to university there, but she's in Chicago now. Am I missing somebody else?
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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As of 1 hour ago at the time of this post, "11 deaths in Oklahoma, six in Missouri, two in Texas and one in New York." Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
I went to high school in Oklahoma, but it's been close to ten years since I've been back. The ice storms we had back then were pretty impressive, but were not at this scale.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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We're getting socked with an ice storm in Detroit right now. Couple inches of ice and a layer of snow on that expected by tomorrow afternoon.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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There are still areas of KS and NE that are without power. But I'm talking about the storm at New Years. The blizzard of '06, it will surely go down in the books as, for western Kansas and parts of Nebraska.
It takes time to replace miles of snapped power poles and replace fallen communications towers. Here are some storm photos from the Goodland NWS office. Sorry about that weird page, but there's a good photo of storm-damaged power poles in there.
Dodge City NWS office photos. If you'll recall, the storm on two weeks ago dumped almost 3 feet of snow in parts of western Kansas. The photos on that page kinda drive home how bad the damage was.
Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
The part of Oklahoma I'm from isn't too bad, at least what I've seen. Icy roads and such, but no power outages. Although the movie theatre I work at has been closed for the past three days, which is unprecedented. Even when Bricktown kept having power outages we had to stay at work so we could start up again once power came back (most business closed for the day).
Posts: 450 | Registered: Nov 2004
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I'm in Missouri. The only problem we've faced was a brown-out turned black-out fried my ailing computer's power supply.
Now I have to decide whether its smarter to buy a replacement power supply and hope the rest of the system keeps functioning for a few years, or bite the bullet and buy a cheap system. I have a load of writing that may only be on that hard drive. (my backup, a Yahoo Group, has most of it, but not all).
I priced a Del replacement on-line, about $500. Any other suggestions where I could go for a good but cheap computer (no monitor or printer needed.)
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Um... it hit me too. (south-central Kansas)
However, we got a more glancing blow than most of Oklahoma. I barely made it into work today (I wasn't supposed to have to work today at all, it's a freakin' BANK HOLIDAY!) but I'm here.
Boon is in an area of Oklahoma that got hit. I hope she's doing okay.
FG
(and she hasn't posted since January 8th, or updated her Blog since December 18th!)
Posts: 9538 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
This would be a good thread to link the pictures I posted on SR. However, I don't have access to my personal web site or SR from work.
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
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I'm new here, and I live in the southeast corner of Kansas, eleven miles from the Oklahoma line, and five miles from the Missouri line. I haven't personally lost power, but as of last night, 70,000 (approximately) people on my electric company, in patches in all directions from me, were without. My kids, who live three miles away from me, on a different company, also have power as of now, and are also (still) worried about losing it. There are no promises about when anybody who's off will get back on: might be as much as a couple of days. My daughter and I have discussed plans for my getting to their house (they have a generator) if I go out for any amount of time. I live on a main highway, which has been cleared and sanded, and they live on a gravel road, which is a solid sheet of 3" or more of ice. Discussion includes alternatives for me to walk some approximation of the crow's flight, or seek shelter with some closer neighbors with wood stoves, or simply try to ride it out (forecast temps near zero the next two nights) with my cookstove burners (my furnace is forced air natural gas, blower run by electricity, my cookstove plain natural gas), candles, and oil lamps, of which I have plenty. My main problem is the hundreds of house plants I don't want to lose: my house animals have fur coats, and I have blankets, and the inside won't go down nearly as far as the outside, since the house is well insulated.
A lot of the towns around here are setting up shelters with generators, but space is so limited that priority is given to people on oxygen machines or other such "life-support", the very elderly, and those with babies.
posted
We're all fine. Power lines are drooping and there's lots of people without power, but we're not among them. We do have a lot of trees losing branches and some have broken, but they haven't hit anything important. *knock on wood*
Even if we do lose power, we have a fireplace and lots of firewood. My larders are full and we have plenty of blankets. We're fine.
The roads are very slippery (the ones that haven't been sand/salted yet) but, since we don't have to go anywhere, that doesn't really affect us.
I'll post pictures on my blog in...probably a day or two.
I hope everyone else is faring as well as we are. I hope others were prepared.
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If anyone's interested, here are links to my local television station, two miles north of me, http://www.koamtv.com/ and my best local newspaper, in Joplin, 16 miles away http://www.joplinglobe.com/homepage Both of which are devoting _lots_ of space to our emergency conditions.
posted
Saturday night at 11pm I took our wounded dog out for his nightly constitutional. The mist had settled in to a permanent cold haze that just hung motionless in the still air. Sound itself was muffled by the ice and mist, creating a complete silence one usually only hears just after a heavy snow. As we crunched through the ice covered leaves on the ground, he sniffing out a place to leave his mark, me trying to stay up hill of that spot, the silence was overwhelmingly spectacular.
And then, as we stood motionless, watering the ice, a loud crack echoed up the forested hills that surround my home. It was followed by the singular sounds of an ancient tree, some father of the forest, crashed to the forest floor.
And a moment later, the silence returned. Only the tinkling of the ice as it moved slightly by some lonely breeze, echoed the death of that wooden sentinal of the forest.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
We've been out of electricity off and on since Saturday. Phone lines are down, cable is out, people have no heat. It's kind of bad here. The school's have been out of electricity too, so it's up for grabs as to whether we'll have school tomorrow.
Posts: 6026 | Registered: Dec 2004
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Nah, had one of those "hunh" moments when reality overturns presumption. That past "hunh" caused me to remember for this thread.
Sibyl, thanks for the report and thanks for the links. Local sources are much better than national coverage. In case you are new to 'forum'ing: Unlike face-to-face/phone/InstantMessages/email, people on forums tend to respond mostly when they can add to points made by other posters. So don't think you are being ignored: we just don't have anything to add to your posts in this thread.
BTW : Be careful using alternative heating. You must have a draft -- ie a slightly open window or door -- to take away the carbon dioxide. Otherwise the fire doesn't get enough oxygen and produces carbon monoxide, which is deadly. If your daughter's generator is in the garage, make sure she knows to keep a garage door slightly open. Some Oregonians accidentally killed themselves by running a generator in a too tightly sealed house.
I'm going to be down your way in two weeks - have a friend in Pittsburg to see, and we're making a jaunt over to Carthage. I was born in Columbus, Kansas, which sounds very close to your current location.
posted
Looks like we're expecting "up to" eight inches of snow this weekend. The ice is just barely starting to melt.
The roads down here where I live haven't seen a plow, sand/salt truck, or anything other than a couple of cars per day. The ice on them is compact, thick, and very, very slippery.
Trash trucks are not running here, and our small electric company is reporting 10,000 people without power. (No, our power isn't out.)
A three year old girl was rushed to the hospital with CO poisoning, caused by the family's heater after their power came back on. She'll be fine, but wouldn't be if her parents hadn't noticed she was shaking in her sleep.
Mayes county's water went out, due to power outages. It's back on, but they're on a boil order.
Shelters are open all over, including one for Greyhound passengers stranded by the storm.
My elderly neighbors (the ones I trade my homemade bread for their garden veggies) are also fine. Their farm animals are packing together to stay warm, and eating extra feed. It's difficult to keep their water thawed, so I go over three or four times a day to water them.
Right now, I'm doing an inventory of our groceries, making menus for the next two weeks. Hubby will go out tomorrow to pick up perscriptions, milk, and lunchmeat. (Even if he didn't, we'd be fine. I have lots of powdered milk, peanut butter, and other supplies on hand.)
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You can send all the snow you don't want to northern KS. Give me your sleet, your snow, your icy masses yearning to breathe free...
<-- More than a little annoyed at having single-digit temps and no snow to show for it. Waste of cold weather.
Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
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This LOOKS like snow, kinda. It's white, and covers the ground. But's not really snow. It's hard as a rock, can't be shoveled and slick as snot. It's basically inches of sleet all melded together into form a crust 4 or more inches deep.
Yeah, I'll be happy to give it away.
(at least it might get above 32 degrees today, so we might get some melting finally).
Sounds like all the nation now is suffering from the same system.
posted
I live in Owasso (near Tulsa). We have a bunch of ice but no loss of power.
The only issue we have had is when my daughter ran into a mailbox while sledding. She had a monster bump on her head, but Tylenol and ice took care of it.
posted
Progress is not good here in SE Kansas, SW Missouri. Lots of folks are still out of power, and the county roads and most city side streets are still impassable. We got a bit of thawing today, but it's a drop in the bucket. Kids are on their sixth snow day, and going for seven. Thirty people have gotten sick from carbon monoxide poisoning from alternate heat, and a few have died. I still have power, and still can't get my car out of my driveway, even though I live on a main road that's clear (part of the problem, actually: the ice dam that the plows built across the driveway). But other than being icebound, I'm fine and my immediate neighbors and kids are fine, and have electricity.
Posts: 69 | Registered: Jan 2007
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(We got five inches of snow, almost three weeks ago, and the wonderful town doesn't plow the roads. So it basically turned into 2" of ice and slush. Driving to work was almost a tobbogan ride one morning.)
Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Boon
unregistered
posted
Official word from the NWS:
quote: Statement as of 10:43 AM CST on January 19, 2007
The National Weather Service in Tulsa has issued a Winter Storm Warning... which is in effect from midnight tonight to 6 am CST Sunday for the following counties...
Snow will begin in the warned area either late tonight or Saturday morning. Snow will be heavy at times Saturday afternoon and Saturday evening. Snowfall rates may exceed an inch an hour.
Total snowfall in the warned area is expected to be in the five to nine inch range.
The storm will taper off to flurries then drizzle around daylight Sunday.
A Winter Storm Warning means significant amounts of snow... sleet... or ice are expected or occurring. This will make travel very hazardous or impossible.
Here we go again.
EDIT: To put this in perspective (mostly for those of you who routinely get a lot more snow than we do and are thinking I'm just a big whiner ) this area normally gets between 5 and 9 inches of snow per YEAR. So far this year, we've had 13, and expecting 5 to 9 MORE. People here are not used to the slick streets, power outages, grocery shortages, lack of services, business and school closings, etc. Lots of cars in the ditches, lots of slip and falls in the emergency room, lots of people in the shelters already.
Again, my family is prepared, but others are not.
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Well, it is a pain for some people, granted. I hope you keep your power, Boon.
Up here in this little part of northern Kansas, we're below average for snowfall this year. Mean snowfall is somewhere in the 15" to 30" range, with an average of 20", according to one source I read. We've had 6" of that 20". Of course, back in November we managed a whopping amount of rainfall, so if you're going off of liquid precipitation, we might be in the normal range.
Of course, I'm only speaking for this location in Kansas. Other places in Kansas are well above average. Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
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At least it's just snow, with maybe a little bit of rain that might help thaw the ice underneath (which was starting to get rotten), but it's on top of that ice, supposed to get 4-6" more, depending on how much of the precip is rain and how much is sleet (depending on odd variations in temps around 32), and when it quits, get very cold again, stopping the thaw progress.
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Sibyl, thanks for the report and thanks for the links. Local sources are much better than national coverage. ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
) this area normally gets between 5 and 9 inches of snow per YEAR. So far this year, we've had 13, and expecting 5 to 9 MORE. People here are not used to the slick streets, power outages, grocery shortages, lack of services, business and school closings, etc. Lots of cars in the ditches, lots of slip and falls in the emergency room, lots of people in the shelters already. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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