Here we go again

Well the ice has started to fall. Seeing as it is just about a year ago to the day that the ice storm hit last year the area is pretty hyped up on whether or not this will be a repeat of ICE STORM 2009... I sure hope not. With that storm (see Ice storm post from last January) we lost power for about 5 days I believe. Luckily some of our friends kept their power so we were able to hang with them. Something about being without power and having a very active 10 month old just doesn't seem like too much fun.

For this storm there is a chance of 1/4 -1 inch worth of ice then on top of that 3-5 inches of snow is due in tomorrow. Adding that nice cushion of snow on top of ice makes diving too much of an adventure if you ask me. Obviously everyone is assuming there will be no school, I even gave my students "snow work" as they called it so they would do a small amount of learning with the break.

If ice and snow do come as planned I am looking forward to some quality Abby time. All we need is for Grant to get to stay home as well, cross your fingers.

Below I am going to try and keep a timeline of this storm. Let's see what the storm has in-store for us.

Thursday, 4:00 pm- 30 degrees, the sleet started to fall.

Thursday, 6:30 pm- 30 degrees, sleet continues to fall. Grant just got home said roads are wet, not slick yet, but there was a thin layer of ice coating his car. Meteorologist just informed the viewing public that the ground, being below freezing temperatures, causes the rain to freeze upon contact, this is why it is called freezing rain....Really, so glad he cleared that up for me. :-)

Thursday, 8:00 pm- 28 degrees, sleet continues to slap the window. Thin coating of ice on tree and patio furniture.

Thursday, 8:45 pm- Just posted... No School Tomorrow! Not a real surprise, but it is nice to know that I don't have to get up early in the morning to find out that there isn't school!

Friday, 6:30 am- Grant got the call that they closed his Fayetteville office today. Lazy day here we come. Lightly sleeting. There is about a quarter inch ice on the ground.

Friday, 11:00 am- The sleet is now turning to snow.

Friday, 5:20 pm- 22 degrees. The snow continues to fall. We have three inches and they are now predicting 5-8 inches of snow once everything is said and done by early Saturday morning. The power is running strong with no flickers! Through the world of Facebook, I've heard there have been a few reports of power outages in Springdale due to a car crashing into a power pole, but all power is back on.

Saturday, 8:30 am- The snow has stopped falling and the sun is starting to shine upon the six inches of snow dumped upon Northwest Arkansas. I had to laugh, as I was explaining to my parents about the excitement in the area over the storm they said this type of storm would have been considered a flop for them in Park City, UT. Where according to http://www.utahskiing.org/ gets appx. 500 inches per year!

So now let the melting begin! The only question that remains now is will enough snow melt before Monday so we can return to school?

Arctic Tornado

So I can't quite figure out how to how to get the text and pictures in the correct order. As I am impatient and it has taken forever to upload everything I am going to leave as is...sorry. After all the pictures is the post explaining everything.

The icicles on the back of our house.

All top branches have given way to the weight of the ice behind our house...poor tree. Doesn't it just look cold!
Sorry for the side angle will work on fixing this. In this shot Grant is heating up some hot water for breakfast on our camp stove on the front porch. This is Day 2 without power.
Tree behind our frence after the left side gave way to the weight of the ice.
This is at the start of the storm just before we lost power. Notice the tree behind the fence with most of it's branches still up.

What a week it has been. It all began with a simple wish of A snow day (notice how I said a...meaning singular). Now with four snow days behind me I'm hoping to return to school tomorrow.

Last week on Monday the ice started to fall and we were let out of school an hour early. The ice continued to fall throughout the night and all of Tuesday. Once it finally stopped icing Springdale accumulated 1.50" of ice. Now this is a lot of ice that is not very forgiving on trees and power lines. We lost power 11:00 a.m. Tuesday and were without power till Friday at 6:20 p.m.. We braved the first night with our gas fire place, but turned it off at night while we were under our warm covers and woke up to a house that was 55 degrees. Some wonderful friends who made it through the storm with power welcomed not only us, but our two pups, a warm place to stay while our house remained an igloo. Following are a few pictures of the experience and the destruction of ICE STORM 2009 (as the local media has termed it).