Latest ice storm in the south

buckaroo

buckaroo

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The latest ice storm that hit the south, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, believe it or not, was second only to hurricane Hugo when it comes to electricity outage. Hurricane Hugo caused outages of over 690,000 people and that is very understandable. The ice storm caused just short of that at over 680,000 outages. Living in Winston Salem, I was in this storm and though I never lost electricity at my home, most of my mail route lost it for a while and one area was without the utility for well over 24 hours. I just found the fact that the outages were very close to the aftermath of Hugo to be a bit odd. Seems that most of the outages were in SC. Just goes to show you that it doesn't take a hurricane to affect thousands of people.
 
I was without electric for a grand total of 92 minutes but our community has undergroung wires. Turns out that a large tree limb broke off just up the road and caused some driver to take out a telephone pole after skidding on black ice.
 
I remember that buckaroo. The ice storm that has been the most memorable for me was last year. I think it was maybe a quarter of an inch of ice, but it had people in Raleigh, NC stuck in traffic for hours and I do mean hours. I was one of the poor defenseless souls stuck on 64 waiting for the Neuse River bridge to open. It took 6 long hours to get home, which by the way should have only taken 30 min.
 
RaceChick said:
I remember that buckaroo. The ice storm that has been the most memorable for me was last year. I think it was maybe a quarter of an inch of ice, but it had people in Raleigh, NC stuck in traffic for hours and I do mean hours. I was one of the poor defenseless souls stuck on 64 waiting for the Neuse River bridge to open. It took 6 long hours to get home, which by the way should have only taken 30 min.
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Ah yes, I remember that well. The reason that storm was so bad was because it started during the day instead of during the night. The road crews hadn't been able to prepare for such a bad storm. What a political storm that ice storm caused. I wonder just how many people actually remember it today? :)
 
buckaroo said:
The latest ice storm that hit the south, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, believe it or not, was second only to hurricane Hugo when it comes to electricity outage. Hurricane Hugo caused outages of over 690,000 people and that is very understandable. The ice storm caused just short of that at over 680,000 outages. Living in Winston Salem, I was in this storm and though I never lost electricity at my home, most of my mail route lost it for a while and one area was without the utility for well over 24 hours. I just found the fact that the outages were very close to the aftermath of Hugo to be a bit odd. Seems that most of the outages were in SC. Just goes to show you that it doesn't take a hurricane to affect thousands of people.
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Is there an Ice storm going on or are you just reminicing of something that happened a while ago?
 
The ice storm, the latest in the south, was last week, Tuesday and Wednesday. They were forecasting something of the same only a bit tamer for this past weekend, but the skies were clear and the temps were fair.

For those of us down here in the south, ice storms are more of the norm than otherwise. The problem is the air up high comes in from the south with all the humidity while the temps closer to the ground hover around the freezing mark. If the upper air was colder, it would produce the snow, but once the snow melts it won't go back to snow, no matter how cold it gets. It's either rain that freezes on contact or it's sleet. Sleet is much better than freezing rain, but what the hell, neither is wanted.
 
buckaroo said:
The ice storm, the latest in the south, was last week, Tuesday and Wednesday. They were forecasting something of the same only a bit tamer for this past weekend, but the skies were clear and the temps were fair.

For those of us down here in the south, ice storms are more of the norm than otherwise. The problem is the air up high comes in from the south with all the humidity while the temps closer to the ground hover around the freezing mark. If the upper air was colder, it would produce the snow, but once the snow melts it won't go back to snow, no matter how cold it gets. It's either rain that freezes on contact or it's sleet. Sleet is much better than freezing rain, but what the hell, neither is wanted.
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Careful you are stating to sound like Greg Fishel :p
 
It was COLD here last night, 24 degrees F. I HATE COLD! And just think what the heating bill will be for this month :(
 
buckaroo said:
The ice storm, the latest in the south, was last week, Tuesday and Wednesday. They were forecasting something of the same only a bit tamer for this past weekend, but the skies were clear and the temps were fair.
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Hey Buck remember when we were talking about that at lunch last Monday? I did stay overnight up there in Clemmons on Tuesday night so I could be at the office on Wednesday morning on time.

Glad I did as it was easy getting to work even though the bridge over the Yadkin was a bit slick. By the time I traveled back home in the afternooon, it was just rain. They even had outages in the Charlotte area and it didn't get as much ice as you guys got up there.
 
Guido, glad that you made it back home safely. On the first day of the storm, I had to dodge falling tree limbs as they were falling all over the place. At one point, I cleared the road of five limbs, some pretty big, and when I got to the second house on that loop, POP, another big limb fell right where I was. The second day was a day of dodging falling ice from the trees. However, but noon that was all over and I could take off the hard hat. :)

Race Chick, I am not familiar with Greg Fishel. Must be a meteroligist from the flat lands. :)
 
buckaroo said:
Race Chick, I am not familiar with Greg Fishel. Must be a meteorologist from the flat lands. :)
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You mean you don't get WRAL in Winston Salem? Oh well, he must be just for those of us east of Raleigh to enjoy.
 
RaceChick said:
You mean you don't get WRAL in Winston Salem? Oh well, he must be just for those of us east of Raleigh to enjoy.
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Sorry sweetie, those of us west of you try to enjoy what we have here. BTW, though we are but 30 minutes from Greensboro, there is quite a separation between the two communities. G'boro doesn't even acknowledge the existence of WS. :)

Back to the original thread subject, even today, there is reported to be 5,000 households still without electricity. Mostly in the Spartenburg/Greenville, SC area. WOW!
 
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