One year ago...

One year ago, we woke to this...

We experienced a major ice storm unlike I had ever seen before. Living in the south, ice storms are not unusual. In fact, I would say we tend to get ice more than snow. But this storm was nothing but freezing rain. No sleet, no snow, everything you see is frozen rain. It rained HARD for about 35 hours with lightning and thunder with the temps between 30-32, just enough to freeze. Even The Weather Channel was here in our small city.

Our corner of the state experienced a near total blackout. Only little pockets of our city remained with power. Some surrounding cities lost nearly their entire infrastructure. When we woke the next morning and began calling all our friends who we discovered were also in the dark, we found ourselves trying to figure out what to do. It became very clear from the radio that it was going to be days before we got power back. We packed and headed to my in-laws an hour away who had missed the storm. Luckily, the roads remained clear, the problem was literally up in the air. You can read my post from that day HERE.

At our house, we were without power for about 70 hours, just short of 3 days. It was very stressful not knowing what was going to happen. You can read more HERE. Both of our works were closed because they too were without power, so at least we didn't have to worry about going to work. Even the following week, my husbands work ran on generators for days until his city was restored. And it was the middle of Feb. before we were able to distribute magazines (I write/photograph for a local magazine) because the city where our magazine is printed was down for 2 weeks.

This picture was taken a couple weeks later when we finally got a little snow. Piles of debris lined our streets for weeks. As you can see, this pile is nearly as high as the roof lines and this is right in the middle of the city. The further out you went the higher the piles got.

Our city had to hire a company to come in and clean the debris up and it was a major operation. I had to go to the burn site for a story I was working on and shot some pics of the trucks coming in. I couldn't believe the amount of debris the storm created. That post: Ice Storm Cleanup
So, as I write this, we await another winter storm moving in tonight. This one promises snow, not ice in our part of the state, but it's pretty strange to be talking about another winter storm exactly a year after our last. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be posting pics of us playing with our new sled, not loading up the coolers with food from our fridge and taking refuge somewhere else!