Iceland… Diminishing!

With a title like that, you’d think this would be about global warming.

WRONG… how about something a bit more real when it comes to peril to humanity… the ice storm here in Iceland northwest Missouri?

Yeah.

Day 3 brought us temperatures, yes, amazingly enough, above freezing! And sunshine!

Good for thawing out our ice-coated area, of course… but BAD for power outages.

Most people don’t realize it, but ice coming OFF power lines is usually as bad (if not worse) for causing outages than ice developing ON lines. It’s especially bad on the transmission system. What happens is basically this… ice loading on all wires on a power line stretches and sags the lines equally, so adequate spacing is maintained. When ice comes off the lines, it generally doesn’t come off all at the same time. Big chunks fall off… the lower lines spring back, and the wires contact each other, forcing breakers to trip on the line ends, knocking out power to complete substations (which often serve hundreds, even thousands of customers). When ice is widespread, this causes major issues for the system, as outages can occur all over. Thankfully, there’s generally not a lot of additional damage, but it does put people in the dark again, at least temporarily.

So that was my life today… watching the system, helping direct crews and restore power as ice-related outages spread across our system. Not necessarily physically hard work, but certainly hectic and draining.

As you might imagine, three days of ice has me feeling pretty worn out… not because it’s been bad at home due to lack of electricity (it hasn’t… we’ve been fortunate to keep it for the entirety of this)… not because we’ve had a busy household with friends staying with us (in fact, it’s been a majorly good time)… not even because we had a household full of college students from the Missouri Western Baptist Student Union tonight (we’re glad to be able to host them)… but simply because ice storms make for some stressful days of utility work, and I’m worn down. VERY worn down.

Anyway, yeah. Here’s hoping and praying we’ve seen the worst of this and that life can get back to normal for everyone soon. Snow is forecasted for tomorrow, and we just don’t know what that will bring.

Keep praying for the region!

(Sorry there’s no pictures today… I left in the dark for work, and returned after dark!)