Ice Storm: 1,200,000 Lost Power, Photos

The death toll from the Plains and Midwest Ice Storm now stands at two dozen, with over 1,200,000 (1 million) without power at the peak of the storm, according to Reuters, who says that 675,000 are still in the dark as of noon Wednesday; some folks may be out for as long as 10 days according to the power companies. Lists of locations selling generators abound; some are being sold out of trucks in parking lots from stores in nearby cities.

MODERATOR'S PICKS FOR "ICE" FROM THE AccuWeather.com Weather Photo Gallery

This may be the largest winter-storm-caused power outage that I have covered in my two years of blogging... I remember that I blogged about an ice storm in December 2005 which caused power outages numbering around half a million (500,000) - FEMA has a permanent record of that. Of course this storm doesn't match up to the great Canadian Ice Storm that left 4,000,000 without power in 1998, but this is certainly the largest power outage caused by an ice storm in the U.S. in my memory.

Click here for a 4-day radar animation spanning this ice storm and the previous one. Below is a plot (click to enlarge) of all NWS Winter Spotter Reports, most of which were ice, between 12/10 18:00 to 12/12 18:00 Z Time courtesy our GIS Pro Business Site.

Below is an Associated Press photo and a video about the storms from ABCNewsOne with footage from KMTV and Jeremy Hubbard, ABC News, Chicago.

Poinsettias are coated in ice in the front yard of Stan Turner's home in Oklahoma City, Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2007. A winter storm has coated much of Oklahoma in ice, knocking out power to more than 400,000 homes and businesses. (AP Photo)