While we New Englanders seem to complain about the weather all the time, it does provide life sustaining capability to the region.

Hot and sunny days grow and ripen crops, and rainy days and snow storms provide critical water supplies throughout the year which also grow crops – although it doesn’t seem to satisfy human thirst with water bans – but that’s another story.

Even extremes such as lightening and ice storms, hurricanes and tornadoes offer a chance to cleanse and get rid of “weak and disease-ridden” trees. Everything would be fine if we humans weren’t in the path of the destruction.

On Thursday night and through Friday December 12, 2008 Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and New York were hit by the worst ice storm in decades. Worcester in Central Massachusetts was particularly hard hit, and as I write this blog post 6 days after the event, thousands of residents in the surrounding towns remain without electricity and heat.

Ice storms are a phenomenon in New England and the Northeast including Canada, and tend to visit during the early and late winter months when cold and warm air masses share the same space. But I’ve experienced them in deep winter as well. And in case you don’t know…

“Ice storms happen when a warm cloud rains above a layer of colder air. This lowers the temperature of the droplets to below zero; however they remain in a liquid state. The supercooled droplets freeze into ice on impact when they fall onto a surface the temperature of which is close to, or below, freezing.” – Wikipedia

The effect of an ice storm can be both beautiful and deadly as the victims of this current storm can attest.

The coating of ice on trees and hedges, and above ground cables and wires creates a surreal landscape and produces some amazing effects. However, ice accumulates on these objects making them heavy and when it does; power cables and tree limbs sag, and finally break and come down, creating havoc and dangerous situations.

Tree limbs the size of large trucks fall on houses and roads, and power lines come down throwing large cities and communities into darkness for days.

Some people try and wait out the storm, thinking power and their heat will be restored in a few hours. But getting the emergency repair crews to the downed lines is a major challenge with roads blocked by huge trees and branches across the road. So an hour turns into two and then finally overnight and a person can freeze to death in their house.

I’m not sure how the “they” measure “worst in decades” – whether it is by number of deaths or number of households without power, or damage and clean-up costs. If the latter it may be weeks before true dollar impact is known of this storm.

If it’s by number of school days lost then it appears this ice storm in Worcester has set the record already. Many Worcester schools declared on Sunday 14^th they’ll be closed for the rest of the year. Happy Christmas kids! Parents – go figure out where to put your kids while you go to work – but make sure it has heat!

A number of shelters were opened early on in the storm when reports came in of electricity issues for hundreds of thousands of customers. Six days in and people are still using these shelters as their family base, and likely into next week – Christmas week.

The weather in New England is a fascinating subject to me. I’ve seen and survived hurricanes and a number of ice storms. An ice storm passed through my area a few years ago in April and the devastation in our woods can still be seen – we lost a bunch of larger bushes as well.

The Great Ice Storm of 1998 hit northern New England and remnants of it can still be seen in the woods of Vermont and Northern New Hampshire and Maine. Canada was particularly hit badly by this storm which made a house-call in January.

Worker crews from around the region and Canada are helping to clean the current mess up and get power back to everybody. And my thoughts go out to all those people and families impacted and having a tougher holiday season than they planned. My appreciation also goes out to all the crews working around the clock to resume power and heat to my friends in Worcester affected by this ice storm.

For more details about the personal impact this storm had on Worcester there is a Worcester Telegram ice storm story here.

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Cliff Calderwood
Publisher
New England Travel Online Magazine

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