Dunlap to Soldier Iowa ICE STORM
January 20, 2010
Back in Omaha we had temps just above freezing ~33 and just got rain, but just north of Omaha was below freezing and had a major ice storm. I checked the estimated storm total on radar and the area between Dunlap and Soldier, Iowa had an estimated inch and a half of liquid fall in the last 24 hours. I left Omaha at 10:30am knowing the roads would have improved tremendously.
Ran into Mike on hwy 37 just east of solider where we found some crazy accumulations. Almost all these images were taken on hwy 37 between Soldier and Dunlap. I'd estimate that at least 1" of ice accumulated in this area, although some trees had up to 2.5" on them.
The ice didn't really look that big unless you walked right up to it and touched it, this was probably an inch and a half or two inches in circumference. It's at 10mm pretty much touching the ice right there.
Ok so this was insane, all the highways were in fine shape, just a bit of slush on the road, I don't remember sliding much if at all on any of the paved roads. The plows were good with getting the salt on the roads early. However, the dirt and gravel roads were a different story, Totally solid with an inch of ice, it really looked like a stream when you take a picture of it, but thats actually an inch of ice covering the entire surface of the road. All the gravel roads looked like this in about a 10 mile stretch along hwy 37. It was tough to capture what it really looked like, but this is the best I could do. This stuff was slick to walk on... let alone drive on. Mike said he tried to drive on one before I got there and his car was sliding sideways towards the ditch. Even when you would walk you'd slide toward the lower ground. It was quite interesting.
Then just getting to the trees on the sides of the roads was interesting, first there is 2 feet of snow then an inch of ice, so it takes a bit of weight to break the ice, but then you just fall all the way down. Some times you'd fall in too fast and hit your shins on the ice, boy that wasn't pleasant, pretty much like banging your knees on cement... awesome.
Here's a telephoto of branches coming down. This was a common scene along the highway.
Frozen pineneedles... those things are tiny and look at how much ice is on them!!! the pine cones looked pretty crazy too, this kinda reminded me of the movie ice age lol.
The trees in this area were just crazy looking, although some didn't accumulate much, I'm not sure why. Certain types allow faster accumulation or something. A lot of them were drooping down and plenty had broken branches. One place we stopped I think I saw 7 or 8 branches fall in about 10 minutes... Like big branches, really loud ice shattering noises.
It really sucked trying to stop places to take photos because the shoulder was always so icy, and it was thin and most of the time had a sharp drop off right there. So you had to pull onto gravel roads just a little bit to get off the hwy, but so you don't slide into the ditch lol. I actually had a close call with a semi... I'll leave it at that LOL.
Easily two inches of ice here, three inches toward the bottom of the branch.
Icicles dropped a foot or more on some of the signs.
I actually had to trek down a gravel road about a 100 yards for this shot, and thats no easy task when its slick as these roads. There is no way anyone could reasonably drive on this road, not just because of the branches in the road, but the ice wouldn't allow it.
Okay, thats a bobber! on a powerline. This was on a bridge over a dam, so that explains the fishing line stuck on the powerline. To my surprise the water was open and flowing pretty fast.
That is fishing line below there! and a half inch of ice on it! HOW IN THE!?!?! is that possible? LOL
This last one is actually at the bottom of Murray Hill. On the way down I was talking to someone on the phone when a big chuck of ice fell off a tree an landed on the top of my car, it was LOUD.
This winter has been one to remember, we've had it all now, 2 blizzards, extreme cold, freezing fog/rime ice a big ice storm, sun dogs, AT optics and a crap ton of fog. 2010 is off to a good start, lets hope this trend continues into Spring.
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