Ice!

[Boondox]

After a week of highs in the teens and lows in the single digits below zero, rain started last night. Of course it froze the moment it hit the ground!

My 12 mile commute to work took 45 minutes. I passed 11 cars off the road and 3 accidents. In fact, the only reason I continued on to work after realizing how bad it was...when I reached the bottom of our hill and tried to turn around I didn't have enough traction even with all wheel drive and the best ice/snow tires to get back up! /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif

On the plus side, once it gets cold again my bobsled run will REALLY be fast!

Pete

 

[looch]

Glad you made it in OK.

I was listening to VPR on the way to work today - sounds bad out your way. It's just rain over here. There was only a little bit of ice on top of the car this morning.

Do they use salt on the roads in VT?

Things should thaw enough to make the trip home after work.

 

[Thomas]

Left for work at 7am and the temp was 37.6F w/warm south breeze no rain..sure felt good for a change /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

As of now the temp 33.2F and light rain /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif just might have to put the tire chains on for the last 2miles ride home. /w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif

Stay safe over there Pete,for the weather lady said"wintery mix will be in store"

 

[dmccarty]

Pete,

Just be thankfull the ice only increased your travel time.

We had a BAD ice storm here in NC a few weeks ago. It took
me two hours to get home. Usually 30 minutes or so. My
nieghbor took SIX yes SIX hours to get home. We lost power
for about 12 hours but we are lucky in that we always get
our power back quickly. Tens of thousands of people took
3-4 days or more to get power back. Not fun. And it was
COLD!

I was going to take pictures of my road that was closed
by downed pine trees. It took three tanks of of fuel in the
chainsaw to clear my road. I still have at least two more
hours with the saw and 5 hours to put the mess in a pile. The
first 300 feet of road created 12 piles of trees. I figure four
trips with the tractor per pile and that is close to 50 runs to
a burn pile. I have another 600 feet of road so that is 150
tractor runs.

If it took 5 minutes per tractor run that is 750 minutes or
12.5 hours. I'm sure it will take more than 5 minutes per run,
closer to 10 so I have 25 hours or so of seat time in front of
me.

Then I get to burn the mess. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

I forgot the camera that day so no pictures. My backhoe is
off the tractor and a tree went down in front of it and another
in back. Close but no damage to any tractor or equipment! /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

This week I went down some roads for the first time since
the storm. It really looks like a war zone in some place with
downed trees and trees broken apart.

We have had some BAD weather down here for the last 5
years or so. Many damaging hurricanes, at least two snow
storms with 24 inches of white stuff. A couple of bad ice
storms. I can see from my woods that this has not happened
in 70 years or so. The woods had very few downed trees
until Fran walked through a few years ago. For the last
couple of years we have had significant damage from storms
every year.

We WILL get a generator when we get the house built! That
should happen 2003 but with El Nino it looks like wet weather
every week. Since October we have had heavy rains pretty
much every week. At least it broke the drought! /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Now that I think about all of this I'm going to be looking out
for Locusts! /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Later,
Dan

 

[StoneHeartFarm]

pete

You guys appear to be 24 hours behind us. We had the ice storm on Wednesday. Took us 20 minutes to get 1/2 mile down the road. First we neeeded 4x4 then it was getting us in trouble, then we needed it again. Once we got that far, we hit a salted cross street. But ours wasn't done until quite late in the day.

If you get the same weather pattern we did, the temp should warm up to almost 50 and rain real hard. Melted all the snow and ice and even thawed the ground out in our drive. That was yesterday. Now, today its snowing again.

SHF

 

[Boondox]

We use sand on the local roads and salt on the highways. There's talk of going to all salt because of silt damage in streams and small rivers.

We had a wicked ice storm a few years back that sounds a lot like Dan's down in NC. Trees and branches down all over the place. Power outages. Folks trapped when trees fell across roads and blocked them in. I remember even the shopping carts at Home Depot had long icicles that froze them to the ground! We pretty much took it in stride. We have enough nasty weather up here that most rural folk have backup water, backup heat, backup light, etc. Vermont was very Y2K compliant!

Best of luck down South getting things back together!

Pete