Weird Weather

Last Friday we closed the office in anticipation of the huge snow and ice storm that was being forecast. It was supposed to start snowing Thursday morning and not stop until late Friday, or maybe even Saturday. Well, it finally started snowing midday Friday, after a lot of rain and some ice. Here's the view I saw from my front porch Friday evening... isn't it pretty?

Saturday I took a walk to get some pictures of what was going on. You can see the whole set here, but I've included a small sample below. You'll notice that there was a lot of beauty to see, and you can also see in one picture that the ice on the tree limbs was as big around as my finger. I measured almost 5½" of snow on a picnic table in my back yard, and the ice must have been about ¼" under that. Needless to say, we stayed home, although as you can see from the pictures, the roads were basically clear by Saturday afternoon. We also had a couple of pretty mean icicles in the backyard... longer than my yardstick!

Here's my favorite picture of the day for irony:


I think tryouts may be postponed.

Needless to say, two 5+ inch snowstorms in less than a month (see this post for more about the snowstorm a month earlier) is odd weather for Tulsa. We've also had several extremely foggy days. Today was one of them. Look what I found when I got downtown for work!

This morning:

Similar pictures in clear conditions:

If you want to see the whole foggy batch, look for it right here.

Less snot - more ice

Monday morning I stayed home from work to take Hannah to the doctor... she had been congested and coughing since the Wednesday or Thursday before, and because she would cough and cry during the night, nobody in the house was getting very much sleep. Turns out she just had some congestion, and swollen tonsils probably irritated by the coughing and making it worse. We've known for a long time that her air passages are a little narrow, so every bit counts for her. :) They gave us a prescription for some medicine, and she's feeling much better... but now Cathy spent so much time sleep-deprived that she's feeling sick! Everybody is slowly getting better, although there is still quite a bit of coughing happening around here.

Tonight in Tulsa is literally the calm before the storm. Tomorrow we are expected to start getting rain, then freezing rain, then sleet, then maybe a little snow by Friday morning. Everybody is thinking about the horrible ice storm we had in 2007; depending on which weather forecast you watch, this is either expected to be as bad as that one, or not really quite as bad. The power company is much better prepared this time; they've been cutting tree limbs more regularly since then, and they have already called in extra help from nearby unaffected areas, so if people start to lose power, PSO should be able to get it back up much more quickly than they did then. We'll see what happens; my main concern in these kinds of situations is to make sure we keep warm if the power goes out. Luckily for us, our heater runs on natural gas... WOO-HOO! But our blower is electric... D'OH!! So when the power goes out, we don't have heat in the house. Worst case scenario, we have relatives with fireplaces and we'll go over to one of their houses until the power is back up.

Fox 23 is predicting that we'll wind up with 2"-4" of snow/sleet on top of .25" of ice before it's over with. It will be below freezing all weekend, and dip back above 32 by about Sunday afternoon. Low of nine degrees Saturday evening! Should be exciting! :)

Ice, Ice Baby!

In December of 2007 Tulsa was hit by a devastating ice storm. Today we were hit by a much less devastating ice storm; I haven't actually heard of any power outages, but if you watch the news you'll get to see dozens of pictures of people's cars flipped over by the side of the road. My workplace is closed for the day. Back 10 years ago that would have meant SNOW DAY!!! These days it means I plug up the spare computer and work from home over the Internet. Not as easy as you might think, with a 13-month-old who wants my lap, an 8-year-old who wants me to help him play Lego Star Wars, and a wife watching weather reports on TV all day! :) I just plug up the earbuds, crank it loud enough to drown out most of the chaos of the house, and dig in!

Now THIS dog had a rough night

Have you ever sat down outside on a cold day?

A really cold day?

Did your butt freeze to the sidewalk??

Forcing you to spend the whole night there???

If so, you know exactly how this dog felt:

SHEBOYGAN, Wis. - A dog weighing more than 120 pounds survived being frozen to a sidewalk overnight, probably because he was insulated by layers of fat, authorities said.

The Sheboygan County Humane Society says the "morbidly obese" dog, an aging border collie mix named Jiffy, froze to the sidewalk when he was left out overnight Wednesday. Shelter manager Carey Payne says few dogs could survive the single-digit temperatures, and it was probably the fat that made the difference.

The rest of the article is right here. I guess the moral of the story is, if you're a big fat dog, try not to sit down outside long enough to stick to the ground when the temperature is in the single digits.

Sheesh!

Ice Storm Cleanup Continues

It's been almost two months since last December's devastating ice storm, and around town there are still piles of tree branches (and in some cases, bigger things like trunks!) all over the sides of the road. The City of Tulsa has been having a really slow time getting them picked up, although they have pledged to make a total of three trips through each neighborhood, I understand, and make sure everything gets picked up. Well, because of the whole having a new baby thing, plus, it being wintertime, ever since then it's either been dark when I've been at home (shorter days in the wintertime), or I've been dog-tired in the daytime because of staying up to feed the baby at all hours.

Anyway, this afternoon after the Men's breakfast at Grace, it was a beautiful day and I was outside anyway, so I dragged the limbs that have been littering my backyard ever since the ice storm out to the curb. As soon as I got finished I looked down the street, and what should I see but the cleanup trucks coming down the street! I'll bet my little pile of twigs wasn't there more than 45 minutes total. It almost looks like they may have gotten to our house and then called it a day, though, because the street past us is still piled with branches. It's a shame, too, because that's the way I have to walk to get to the bus; with piles of branches sometimes covering the sidewalk, and in the dark just before sunrise, it can be pretty hazardous if you check out mentally and don't look where you're going. I'll sure be glad when they get that cleared out so I can safely walk on the sidewalk again.

Ice Storm Redux

Well, we were able to go home yesterday evening... I slept in my own bed! My parents, on the other hand, were either less lucky or more lucky... a friend of theirs grabbed a room for them when it came open in the otherwise-full hotel where she works, so instead of sleeping in their cold house, they got to sleep at Holiday In Express. My wife's dad still has power, but his driveway is blocked by debris... you can get in and out on foot, but not in cars. Some of the tree branches that were down in his yard were not actually broken, and when the ice melted off they sprang back up, so some of what we thought we were going to have to clear out is actually back where it belongs. :) His car and pickup have some branches on them, but because they were coated with maybe a half-inch of ice when the branches fell we hope there's no damage.

Much of Tulsa is still without power, but my impression after driving through town last night is that now at least the no-power sections are the exception and the we-have-power sections are the rule (Tuesday night that was not the case). Even my church has power back; it came on late yesterday afternoon (they had already canceled Wednesday night service, though, and they did not reinstate).

My 7-year-old's school has been canceled all week. Tonight was supposed to be their Christmas program... D'OH! Our church program has missed out on two important rehearsals so far, too... D'OH!! We're not in it because of our upcoming labor induction (the morning of the production!) but we still hope they are able to do an excellent job.

Supposed to snow Friday and Saturday, but hopefully it won't cause another mess like the one this week.

Oklahoma Ice Storm - December 2007

Wow.

OK, so Sunday we went to church as usual, came home as usual, did all our regular Sunday stuff as usual. Watched Dallas beat Detroit at home in a surprisingly close game. Went to bed as usual... then at 4am woke up NOT as usual. The power was out, so I got up and called the power company. Apparently the power was out for a lot of people... there was some ice during the night. It was cold, so I went and got our 7-year-old and took him to our bed so he wouldn't get cold and we toughed it out until morning.

In the morning we started calling around for someone with electric so we could get into a warm place. My mom and dad had no power... she was planning to run her oven all day and keep the house warm that way (ultimately that worked for her). Cathy's brother with the big house in Broken Arrow was out of power too. Finally we called Cathy's dad who lives by the fair grounds... and his power was on, so we bundled up and went to his house.

There was no ice on the street... the ground temperature was comparatively warm, so the streets were OK. Except for the occasional tree limb. And WHEW, about those tree limbs! But I'll get to that in a minute. Cathy's dad's power was on when we got there, but an hour or two later... BAM! no power. We had plenty of flashlights, though, and some battery- and oil-powered lanterns, and he lit the burners on his gas stove to keep the place warm, so our main enemy was plain old boredom. A few hours later the power came back on, but not the cable TV... fortunately we had lots of DVDs to help keep my little boy occupied (it ALMOST worked!) and except for a few flickers and one 20-minute blackout, the power hasn't gone back off. Later we learned that we are about two blocks from the main staging area that the power company is sending the emergency trucks out from, which probably explains why we had power when everyone else outside of our immediate area was still dark.

As of yesterday afternoon, my house in East Tulsa was still without power. According to the Tulsa World this morning, 220,000 homes in the Tulsa area are still dark... I understand that the ice took out the power of half a million homes across the state. Oklahoma has been declared a federal disaster area, with $5 million in aid to go to local governments to help with debris removal. All those tree limbs! It's incredible the size of some of the tree limbs (and whole trees) that were taken down by this ice. My father-in-law has part of his magnolia tree on his roof now, although luckily it doesn't appear to have done any damage. Yesterday the power company estimated for my wife that our power would be on today, so let's hope.

The power is also out at my church... if you click that link and get nothing it's because their Web server is still down. :) I don't think the power ever went down where I work downtown. I didn't come in to work Monday or Tuesday (my boss said not to) but I expect to be business as usual from here on out.

UPDATE: a friend of ours wrote a pretty cool blog post about the ice storm a few weeks after the fact.