Hail freezes higher up in the atmosphere. Ice storms are like rain storms, only the rain freezes on contact to ice. Hope you never have to experience it firsthand. It bites!

Yeah, the upper atmosphere was warm, but at the surface it was just below freezing. We had what amounted to several inches of rain, but it froze to everything it touched. I walked across the yard to get the paper and I was walking on top of the blades of grass, because they were frozen over with so much ice! Every tree limb and twig had an inch or more of ice around it. After our power went out, we stood at the window and watched trees breaking for entertainment. We don't have any big ones yet in our yard, but on the next street over there were some big old oaks. While I was watching, the top 20 feet of one just broke off and fell over. It sounded like constant gun and cannon fire.

Although ice storms are not uncommon here, I had a bad feeling about this one when it was forecast. Monday AM I went to Lowe's and bought a little propane heater and some fuel, made sure I had plenty of battery lamps etc, stocked up on non-cook foods. Everything in our stupid house is electric except the water heater and the central heat, but you have to have electric for the blower on the heat to work. I felt a little silly for going so overboard, but I figured it was better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

When our power went out Tues at 5pm I was feeling pretty smart! We used to camp a lot, so were able to cook a little bit with our propane camp stove. We put the kids on a mattress in our bedroom and heated it with the propane heater. The problem was, after a couple of days we ran out of propane and there wasn't any more in the stores! It got down to 42 degrees in our house. Almost all of the stores had no power, and the ones that did were sold out. People couldn't get gas for their cars, or buy groceries or anything.

DH's mom and dad didn't have power but his sister and BIL did intermittantly. We stayed at their house all day, but they didn't have room for us all to sleep there. I finally decided to take the kids and go to my mom's about 90 miles south. Even if her power is off, she has all natural gas appliances and can still cook and heat her house. DH and his folks all slept at his sister's.

After a couple of days, DH got lonely and went and borrowed a generator so we could come home. We could run the heater, the freezer, and a few lights with it. Problem was, it went through a tank of gas every 6 hours. DH got tired of pouring money in it, so when his folks' power came back on we packed up and went over there. Of course, our power came back on that night, after we had taken a whole carload of stuff to their house!

We had it pretty bad here - the electric company workers that came in from other states said the trees were as bad as after Hurricane Katrina. But from the TV it looks like Kentucky has it worse than us. We had over 100,000 without power, and they had something like 400,000 without power! It takes a while to clean up after this big of a mess.

I have to brag on the folks in our area, though. Everyone pitched in and volunteered and helped their neighbors, and things are getting cleaned up fast. The papers are full of stories about folks who took care of neighbors and even complete strangers. Even the electric company guys were impressed because people were bringing them hot drinks and sandwiches. They said in some places they have to have armed guards to keep off the people who are mad about their power being off.

How awful for you Arkie. I hope things are getting better for you all. It's a long process though..

I think the strangest thing for me during ice storms is watching the power lines before the power goes off. They arc and there's a blue haze surrounding each wire. You can hear popping sounds and see flashes of blue and as the power loss moves towards you, the transformers shower sparks and have that blue haze around them before they blow. You can smell the ozone from it and it just makes everything look unearthly, since all the lights are off except for the electrical blue haze surrounding the wires and reflecting off the ice on the branches and the surrounding objects!

Probably not the smartest thing to do, standing outside watching it, but it sure was exciting to see!

Cool River, I've never seen that phenomonum!!

Nature is still more powerful than man..

Me neither, River! There was no way I was going out in that mess, although I did watch from inside the garage when I let the dog out. That sounds way cool.