PEI: The Ice Storm of 2008

Wow, that was some storm!!! Hear about it on the radio, TV, people mention it, me not expecting much more than a drizzle of rain. Wake up Monday morning, look out the window, I see this:
That's alot of ice! Watch you head! imagine power lines with that much ice! No school.

This poor little branch was one of the ones better off. Some had about an inch thick on them! The power lines in some places had ice FOUR INCHES THICK on them. Poles were down everywhere. Lines down. Transformers blew.

"The poles were snapped like toothpicks" as one reporter put it. This was the worst ice storm in decades. My power was out for 5 WHOLE days! Longest ever. Fascinating how mother nature can be so powerful!

Meanwhile I was exploring the damage (of which there was a lot of):


Heavy, heavy ice.

In some places people's power merely flickered. Others, it was out for upwards of a week(me!). Generators flew off the shelves, or for those who couldn't get one either borrowed one or stayed at someone else's house to keep warm and just hoped that their pipes wouldn't burst in their house from the cold. For several hours on Wednesday 96 % of the Island was without power!!!

Look at the crews working their behinds off. Hats off to Maritime electric crews who worked 16 hours every day(the longest that they're allowed to work according to law). The premier even put the army on standby if assistance was needed to help get things back in order.

There were stretches of roads where a kilometer stretch had poles("snapped toothpicks") laying beside the road. They were broken in the middle, at the bottom, top, lines down on the ground, lines fizzling the day after in the snow sending warm water vapor into the air.

All in all, there were more than 300 poles down! Damages for Maritime electric are calculated at TWO MILLION DOLLARS!!! As of yesterday just less than 50 customers were without power. Although for many days it was 22,000 households as the repair crews struggled to fix worst hit areas.

For me, great! Exams postponed to the next week so that I have extra time to study.





All anyone can say is, there better not be another this year! Yikes!

Unimaginable what could've happened if there had been even more freezing rain, the results : Almost every pole down on the Island. Most likely there wouldn't have power for weeks.


reevesAstronomy