When I wrote yesterday, St. Joseph was experiencing the beginning of a severe ice storm. 24 hours later, the rain finally stopped (after dumping almost 2 inches of precipitation), and we were left with a nice coating of ice blanketing everything.
Obviously, this much ice is bad news for a town that’s been around as long as St. Joseph has… there are a lot of older trees that, with ice loading, are wreaking havoc on the electric power system here. Damage to the power system from ice, primarily due to tree branches, left roughly 90% of St. Joseph residents without electricity. I don’t know what the percentages are for the entire area, but it’s definitely a significant figure.
The good news in all of this? Somehow, we were one of the fortunate ones to have electricity still flowing to our home.
Needless to say, this is a great development. While I’m at work helping with this mess (I work for an electric utility in the area), I don’t have to worry about Nancy and the kids staying warm. Additionally, we’re able to share our home with friends, so they’re staying nice and warm as well. We’ve got seven kids ages five and under running around, and six adults. Talk about busy! It’s definitely good though… the kids are having a blast together, and once they’re in bed, we adults are having some good laughs as well. We’ll all remember this for a long time.
Anyway, a post about an ice storm just wouldn’t be complete without a couple pictures, so here’s a couple I shot yesterday morning, about halfway through the storm.
ouch! Praying for you.