Ice Storm 2009 - Fayetteville, AR

On Tuesday January 27th, Northwest Arkansas received more than 1.25" of ice in 24 hours. Karen and I were without power for more than seven days, and there were a reported 210,000 customers without power during the peak outage. As of today, there are still more than 20,000 customers without power in NWA. We managed to stay warm and keep our spirits high by staying with friends. A big thank you goes to Brandon for letting us stay at his house, to Rachel for cooking everyone dinner, and to all of our friends and family who contacted us.

The most memorable moments of the storm for me were on Tuesday evening. As I stood on my front porch I watched the fluorescent blue and green flashes of blown transformers and toppled power lines filling the sky, much like a lightning storm, accompanied by the horrific gunshot sounds of snapping trees and falling branches.

The pictures below were mostly taken on Wednesday, the day after.

It seems like quite some time before there will be Blackberries on this branch.

Unbelievably, this tree is standing erect as ever today, and much stronger for it.

A single blade of grass with over an inch of accumulated ice.

Power. I had none.

This was a half mile from my house, and the main reason we had no power for so long, I guess.

The University of Arkansas - Old Main