Free Republic

An arctic blast that has sent the Pacific Northwest into the ice box is about to mix with a strong Pacific storm later Thursday and Friday, bringing a recipe for a significant ice storm across northwestern Oregon and western Washington, including Portland and the Willamette Valley, and Seattle and the Puget Sound region, threatening to grind holiday travel to a halt and knock out power to thousands. Winter storm warnings are in effect across much of the coastal Pacific Northwest, including the greater Portland and Seattle areas for a myriad of winter woes. For the Portland area, freezing rain accretions...

It’s an old newsroom axiom that “if it bleeds, it leads.” That may have been true in the age of the New York Herald and James Gordon Bennett but this is 2021 and it’s the age of digital news. Lead stories are now wholly dependent on whose ox is being gored and what their party affiliation might be. If the gored ox is Republican, you can bet it will be the lead story every hour on the hour.Ted Cruz made the dumbest political move of his life by leaving Texas to go to Mexico while cold snap made lives miserable...

Unseasonal ice storms hit many parts of Russia on November 18 and 19, 2020, causing power outages, traffic chaos, and the collapse of key infrastructure systems in the Far East. An overnight storm accompanied by strong northerly winds and ice rain -- described by The Siberian Times as 'weather apocalypse' -- caused the collapse of key systems in the Russian Far East on November 19, 2020, leaving at least 120 000 people without electricity. Vladivostok and most of the Primorye region were turned into frozen land, the paper reported, adding that hundreds of power lines were cut by wet snow...

FULL TITLE: Boston is drowning in historic 15ft flood of icy water - trapping people in cars and homes - as 'bomb cyclone' storm explodes over Northeast closing schools, cancelling 4,000 flights and killing six Boston experienced historic flooding on Thursday, as a 'bomb cyclone' winter storm hit the Northeast, bringing heavy snow, winds and storm surge. Meteorologists said Boston was unofficially nearing a water level record set during the Blizzard of 1978. Matt Doody, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Taunton, told the Boston Herald that the Weather Service couldn't 'officially' call it a new record, but...

People from Texas to Ohio are bracing for a dangerous long-duration ice storm that could turn destructive and cut power to hundreds of thousands from Friday to Sunday. A shallow layer of cold air in the atmosphere will accompany a storm over the central United States. The storm will produce a swath of freezing rain along a 1,000-mile swath. As the chilled rain falls on cold surfaces, it will freeze into a thin glaze of ice at first. The transparent and slippery nature of the ice will be a great hazard for motorists and pedestrians.

..ICE STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 4 PM THIS AFTERNOON TO 7 AM EST MONDAY... ...WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 7 AM TO 1 PM EST MONDAY... * TIMING...LIGHT FREEZING RAIN AND SLEET WILL BE POSSIBLE FROM THE MIDDAY HOURS INTO THE EARLY AFTERNOON. MORE WIDESPREAD FREEZING RAIN AND SLEET WILL OVERSPREAD CENTRAL INDIANA FROM SOUTHWEST TO NORTHEAST AFTER 500 PM. FREEZING RAIN WILL END BY 700 AM MONDAY MORNING...CHANGING OVER TO SNOW. LIGHT SNOW ON TOP OF ANY ICE ACCUMULATIONS WILL RESULT IN SLIPPERY CONDITIONS ON TONIGHT AND MONDAY MORNING.ICE ACCUMULATIONS...NEAR ONE QUARTER OF AN INCH.

A winter storm bringing ice and whipping winds to upstate New York and northern Vermont knocked out power to thousands of customers as officials urged motorists to avoid traveling in dangerously slick conditions. More than 95,000 utility customers woke up without power Sunday morning in New York, Vermont and Maine because of widespread ice accumulations. In New York’s St. Lawrence County, almost 2 inches of ice had accumulated early Sunday, coating tree limbs and power lines, county dispatch operations supervisor Jim Chestnut said. …

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) has ordered utilities to begin rotating outages to compensate for a generation shortage due high usage in extreme weather. Rotating outages are controlled, temporary interruptions of service designed to ease the load on the electric grid.  To see recent reports on the grid load, click here. The outages last anywhere from 10-45 minutes and the locations and durations are determined by the local utilities. Critical need customers such as hospitals and nursing homes are generally not included It is not known at this time how long the need for rotating outages will last....

WASHINGTON, Feb. 6, 2009 – Though some of them contain peanut butter, the 660,000 packaged military meals the Defense Logistics Agency and Federal Emergency Management Agency are shipping to Kentucky and Arkansas storm victims are safe, officials here said. The meals -- known as “Meals, Ready to Eat,” or “MREs” -- will replace the commercial meal kits that have been distributed to the storm victims. DLA’s Defense Distribution Center in New Cumberland, Pa., is arranging shipment of the meals, scheduled for delivery today. A recent Food and Drug Administration recall of some products containing peanut butter has prompted the Defense...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – As Sgt. Michael Franks pulled up to a shack resting among the ice-coated limbs of a forest in northeast Arkansas, he said he couldn't believe that anyone was living on the property

Last evening’s story on the tragic ice storm in Kentucky and surrounding states contrasted strangely with the reporting surrounding hurricane Katrina. The story was largely upbeat with local responders coping with the horrific after-effects of the storm. Note that dozens of people died as a result of the storm so it was not merely inconvenient. Hundreds of thousands are still without power or heat and may be for as long as a month in freezing temperatures during the coldest winter in a decade. The primary contrast was the fact the report made absolutely no mention of FEMA or – for...

EDDYVILLE, Ky. (AP) — In the first real test of the Obama administration's ability to respond to a disaster, Kentucky officials are giving the federal government good marks for its response to a deadly ice storm. Yet more than 300,000 residents remained without power Monday and some areas had yet to see aid workers nearly a week after the storm, a fact not lost on some local authorities. "We haven't seen FEMA. They haven't been here," said Jaime Green, a spokeswoman for the emergency operations center in Lyon County, about 95 miles northwest of Nashville, Tenn. Federal authorities insisted they...

In some parts of rural Kentucky, they're getting water the old-fashioned way -- with pails from a creek. There's not room for one more sleeping bag on the shelter floor. The creative are flushing their toilets with melted snow. At least 42 people have died, including in Kentucky five from the storm and six others suspected to be storm-related, and conditions are worsening in many places days after an ice storm knocked out power to 1.3 million customers from the Plains to the East Coast. About a million people were still without electricity Friday, and with no hope that the...

Last week a massive ice storm struck the heartland of America, leaving at least 42 dead and millions without power or water. Days later there are still over a million people in Kentucky who have no power, no water, and no communications. They could have to survive this way for weeks! The conditions are dire and getting worse, with some storm survivors carrying pails of water from creeks. Thousands more are living in shelters with no timetable for returning home. FEMA is nowhere to be found. Amid this catastrophe, where is President Barack Obama? While millions are struggling were struggling...

We may want to remind ourselves of media and political coverage of past natural disasters because the media remains besotted with Team Obama, and... by the way it's day 7 of dozens of people freezing to death in the Midwest and where's the Obama government? ... Let’s see… what’s the media’s reaction to the catastrophe in Kentucky where more than 45 people have died during a “global warming” ice storm. ... Ed Driscoll has a fair headline: Obama Dozed, People Froze! Headline via the The Sundries Shack, which asks, "Has anyone seen FEMA lately?" It seems we have people dying...

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) - Kentucky's governor will ask President Barack Obama on Monday to speed up federal aid dollars as costs spiral past $45 million for emergency work to restore power, hand out water and food and clear debris across the state hit hard by an icy winter storm last week.

The following things happened within 100 hours after Hurricane Katrina smashed into the Louisiana/Mississippi coastline in 2005. The Anchoress wrote: Before Katrina struck, New Orleans and surrounding areas had been declared “disasters” by President Bush, who did so in order to expedite the delivery of monies and services needed to cope with what everyone believed would be a very bad storm. Actually, he did the same thing, last year, for Hurricane Charley, and was criticized for doing so by some, but that’s not important right now.Between 2,500 and 3,000 people have been rescued by the Coast Guard, National Guard and...

Ohio Humvees Help In Kentucky Storm ReliefSun, Feb 01, 2009. 03:31 PM By: Jennifer Steck Louisville, KY. (AP) -- Airmen from the National Guard are headed to Ohio to pick up Humvees to aid in relief efforts from the ice storm that has crippled parts of Kentucky, especially in the western region. Sgt. Phil Speck of the Kentucky Air National Guard says the Airmen will board a C-130 in Louisville on Sunday afternoon to fly to Columbus, Ohio. They'll drive back to Kentucky in the Ohio National Guard's humvees and spread out to areas of western Kentucky where they are...

MARION, Ky. – A crippling winter storm has plunged about a million customers into the dark from the Midwest to the East Coast, and thousands of people in ice-caked Kentucky have sought refuge in motels and shelters. Dozens of deaths have been reported and many people are pleading for a faster response to the power outages. Some in rural Kentucky ran short of food and bottled water, and resorted to dipping buckets in a creek.

MARION, Ky. – In some parts of rural Kentucky, they're getting water the old-fashioned way — with pails from a creek. There's not room for one more sleeping bag on the shelter floor. The creative are flushing their toilets with melted snow. At least 42 people have died, including 11 in Kentucky, and conditions are worsening in many places days after an ice storm knocked out power to 1.3 million customers from the Plains to the East Coast. And with no hope that the lights will come back on soon, small communities are frantically struggling to help their residents.