Ice Storms - Notable Ice Storms

Notable Ice Storms

An ice storm which struck northern Idaho in January 1961 set a record for thickest recorded ice accumulation from a single storm in the United States, at 8 inches.

In February 1994, a severe ice storm caused over $1 billion in damage in the Southern United States, primarily in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama.

The North American ice storm of 1998 occurred during January 5–9, 1998. It was one of the most damaging and costly ice storms in North American history. The storm caused massive power failures in several large cities on the East Coast of the United States. The most affected area was extreme eastern Ontario and southwestern Quebec in Canada, where over 3 million people were without power for up to a month and a half. Whole trees snapped and electrical pylons were completely flattened under the weight of the accumulated ice.

The Northeastern United States was impacted by a major ice storm on December 11–12, 2008, which left about 1.25 million homes and businesses without power. Areas impacted with 3⁄₄ to 1 in (19 to 25 mm) of ice accumulation included eastern New York in the Albany area, central and western Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire, coastal and south-central Maine, Pennsylvania in the Pocono Mountains region, northwestern Connecticut, and southern Vermont. Southern New Hampshire and northernmost Massachusetts got hit the worst with the storm with ice accumulations ranging from 1.5 to 3 in (38 to 76 mm) of ice. This left residents unable to get supplies, go to work etc. due to blocked roads from trees that fell on the roads. Any trees that fell quickly took down power poles. It took utility crews from 4 to as much as 16 days to get a look at the damage and start to restore power to nearly 1.3 million people. In all there were 675,000 residents in New Hampshire without power and around 500,000 in northern Massachusetts.

In late January, 2009, ice storms covered several U.S. states, including Arkansas and Kentucky. Most areas affected saw over 2 in (51 mm) of ice accumulation, and between 1–5 in (25–127 mm) of snow on top of the ice. This ice storm left well over 2 million people without power at its peak and killed 55 people, 24 in Kentucky. Rural Water Associations in Arkansas and Kentucky activated emergency response plans to deal with power loss to small water utilities across their states. Neighboring state Rural Water Associations, including experienced emergency responders from Louisiana and Florida, loaned equipment and manpower to assist the hardest-hit areas.

During the unusually severe winter of 2009–2010 in the United Kingdom, heavy snow had fallen over much of the country in late December and early January. By the second week of January, many of the roads and pavements had been cleared by local councils due to the use of rock salt gritting. However, during the early hours of 12 January, a wet front moved across the country, causing freezing rain and heavy ice glaze, particularly in the South and West Yorkshire areas of Northern England (crucially, this rainfall had stopped before first light). When the local population prepared to set out for work and school, they saw from their windows what appeared to be clear roads and pavements but were in fact treacherous sheets of black ice. Cars and buses almost immediately encounted extreme difficulty, and emergency services were called to dozens of accidents. Pedestrians in the village of Holmfirth found the only safe way to proceed was to crawl on all fours. Accident and emergency units at hospitals in the Sheffield, Rotherham, and Barnsley areas found themselves inundated by people with broken bones, fractures, and sprains, and many schools were closed as it was judged unsafe for pupils to attempt to make their way there.

On December 25, 2010, freezing rain fell on Moscow and vicinity. The glaze ice accumulation caused a number of accidents and power outages, of which the most serious was damage caused to two power lines feeding Domodedovo Airport, causing a complete blackout of the airport and express railway that connected it to the city. As a result, the airport was shut down and hundreds of passengers were stranded inside, with taxi drivers charging up to 10,000 rubles (USD 330) for a one-hour drive to the city. Other city airports, Sheremetyevo and Vnukovo, where air traffic was re-routed and amid heavy snowfall that followed ice rain, collapsed a day later, causing a full air transport collapse.