Ice Storm Leaves Tremendous Damage

Our CoCoRaHS friends in the center of the nation are starting to thaw out -- what an ice storm!

I have to tell you, growing up in Arkansas and living through many ice storms, well -- it really stinks. You are literally trapped. Life stops.

It can also be downright creepy once you lose power. There are so many sounds -- trees creaking, limbs snapping, power lines popping and transformers blowing -- it makes it hard to sleep.

I was home for Christmas about 5 or 6 years ago when an ice storm hit. A pine tree fell on our house and we had to evacuate to another relative's home. It took over an hour to drive less than 3 miles on country roads.

I hope you are all safe and as life gets back to normal and you can file a CoCoRaHS report again -- when you do so, feel free to leave a detailed comment in your first report about your experience during the storm, damage in your area, etc..

The information will be great to archive for your station.

In a recent comment, an observer from Kansas asked about reporting a trace or zero when you have dew.

Dew is not precipitation because it forms at the surface and does not fall from the sky. It is a completely different process than precipitation.

Therefore you would report zero when you have dew in the morning. If you like, you can definitely note that there was dew in your comments.

A simple comment like "heavy dew this morning" tells a meteorologist something about the weather at your location. I would conclude it was moist, the temperature and dewpoint were very close together if not equal -- and perhaps something was on the weather map in your location such as a warm front.

Hope that helps -- keep the comments coming. I do my very best to read each and every one, and try to answer them too. I remain very busy with work right now so bare with me on my response time.