Frozen water storm? Black frozen water? That would sound so weird. OMG and LOL.
4 Likes
I have a relative who lives in an Atlanta suburb, and their power lines are also underground. Is this the norm in Atlanta, or just for the lucky few?
What a great investment in infrastructure. I live in a neighborhood that is uncharacteristically very very full of trees in my city. It’s great most of the time, but in severe icy weather, it works against us. I wish we had underground power lines!
3 Likes
For shelters for outside cats (and/or other critters), towels and blankets can wick the cold and moisture (if they don’t have a heating pad). Straw is the preferred insulating material. And not a cardboard box for the same reason. Here are easy instructions for a DIY cat shelter if you have some extra plastic bins around: How to Make an Insulated Winter Shelter for Stray and Feral Cats | Houston Humane Society
So far a little bit of sleet here and the power is still on. Fingers crossed the freezing rain stays away. We are prepared but I will be ecstatic if all our preparations are for nothing.
Our weather person completely blew her forecast. All week, up until yesterday afternoon, we were expecting a mainly snow event. It started sleeting around 1:30 am; I was already awake as my neighbor was outside at midnight scraping his driveway. This morning, it’s still sleeting and freezing rain is expected this afternoon. Argh. It is what it is.
2 Likes
Wow - just ran into this “predicament” yesterday reading an article about “how to handle ice” which I assumed was about driving on ice or what to do around your house - nope - it was tips on how to deal with the immigration folks. I probably should have finished reading as when my son walked in he said his regular social group canceled their meeting when ICE trucks were reported around where they meet and no one wants to be remotely close to where they are. No one in his group is an undocumented immigrant but not sure that matters any longer.
4 Likes
All of our power lines are underline in north Atlanta and north of Atlanta suburbs….they were underground in Dallas as well. Pretty sure this is the way suburbs were built since the 70s. However, you can still lose power when the large power stations and transmission lines end up being impacted.
1 Like
Yes, as I told @jym626 I thought we might miss the ice/snow as well since we are right on the line in north Atlanta but woke up to yard/road full of sleet and ice frozen trees so unless it gets above freezing, no one will going anywhere for a while. South to the airport (50 miles) it could be quite different.
2 Likes
I once read a statistic that said something like over 80 (maybe even 90%) of our housing stock was built before 1980. Most are between 1930–1960s. So they are not very well insulated - we are in the south - nor are the power lines underground. From time to time people talk about burying them, and we have done that in a few places during streetscape projects downtown. But in general it is very expensive and we don’t have the $$$. Our locality owns the utilities in our area.
And our area is full of giant trees, and many are right around the power lines. The crews used to regularly trim them around the lines, but that task was stopped years ago, I assume because of cost.
so far it looks like we have mostly sleet. Everything is covered. Edit - darn. Weatherunderground is calling is freezing rain now and significant more icing likely all day. I don’t hear it clacking like I did last night
We have 3 inches of snow so far. Still coming down steadily. No sleet so far. No power outages reported in the region.
D made it home without incident. She saw only 1 other car on the road, but passed 16 or 17 snow plows. If we do indeed get the ice storm portion of Fern, things will dicey for tonight. We live near the bottom of long hill and our block is very steep. If she can’t get out, she can walk to the main road about 1/2 mile away and Uber to work.
I had underground lines in ABQ, but we used to get power outages all the time. Why? Because the junction box for the entire subdivision was at the bottom of hill where the street ended and the street was straight up/down on a fairly steep hill. Consequently, we got tremendous run off/flash flooding on that street during thunderstorms. We’d lose power multiple times during the summer monsoon season when the box got flooded. That’s the thing about underground lines–they’ve got to emerge somewhere.
Then in 2011, the main interstate gas delivery line coming north from El Paso froze and most of the state had no natural gas and therefore no heat/hot water for almost a week during the middle of a winter blizzard with record low temperatures…..that was fun.
4 Likes
5” and now sleet here - just north of DC.
We were supposed to arrive in that area yesterday, and we postponed our trip. We didn’t want to drive through the mountains in the snow that was predicted, so we considered flying. The ice predicted for the Atlanta area worried us, though, since we would need to drive around in order to do what we came for (visit MIL in assisted living). Watching the weather reports, we’re really glad we decided to change plans.
3 Likes
Our precipitation event is over, but we will have bitter cold for the next several days. I don’t believe we’ve had any major power disruptions, thank goodness. Some spotty problems I think, but at least crews aren’t overwhelmed trying to restore. Knock wood this holds.
Hoping everyone fares well as the storm moves east.
5 Likes
We are at probably 5 inches here in Northern Ohio and it will continue to snow all day. A couple hours south (Columbus) they have more they will probably have a foot before they know it!
Seems to be windy too which is bad because while you have to try and keep up with blowing the snow with the snowblower, your work gets defeated pretty fast. :(. H will head out for the first time around noon. I will try and keep a path open for the pup out back.
2 Likes
Because snow and ice is rare in the area, there is not a lot of snow clearance equipment. They have salted the roads, but its very hilly here and if the roads are a sheet of ice, it can be a real challenge because it is like like bumper cars because the cars can’t stop on the ice, and many don’t have experience driving in it. Overpasses an be icy too even if the roadways are relatively clear. Add to that that there are many pines and some other trees also have greenery even at this time of year, and the weight of the ice on any branches, combined with the wind they were expecting, cause many to fall and damage roads, houses and power lines. The newer neighborhoods (and newer can mean neighborhoods build even 40+ years ago) have underground power lines, but much of the intown metro area and more rural areas have telephone and power poles and trees and ice can take down the lines. The constant news attention here is annoying, but it’s not a laughing matter. They just said that a half inch of freezing rain weighs a lot- the equivalent about 400 gallons of milk on the trees. Atlanta is known as “the city in the trees”, so falling trees/branches on roads and power lines is a real concern. Fortunately it seems that the temps in the immediate metro area are currently above freezing, though east of here is still below freezing, and a cold blast is due here tonight.
4 Likes
ehhh - lots of cracked, fallen branches on the neighbors trees and some simply leaning due to the weight of the ice. One of the neighbors pines appears to be leaning against my house. Nothing we can do now. Hopefully not hurting the gutter. Some of Nashville is without power, but so far, so good, so lucky. But it’s raining - frozen - so more is to come.
4 Likes
Amazingly we still have power this morning but a neighbor’s tree has already fallen into our backyard and a friend’s house had a tree come through their roof into their guest bedroom. The amount of ice we got here is really causing chaos this morning!
11 Likes
My building brought out our big snowblower for the sidewalks.
2 Likes
OOh so sorry! Where are you located?
