Iowa Ice Storm

[Roger H]

As most of you know, we had a nasty, nasty ice storm followed up immediately by a blizzard just a few days later. We were out of grid power for 36 hours in our town (although we had local generation from our municipal utility) and there were rural customers out of power for well over a week.

One of my good friends from Wisconsin is an Alliant Energy lineman, and he and his crew came down to Iowa to help restore power. He worked near Cedar Rapids for an entire week to help restore power to eastern Iowa. He is an Airstream owner, and a moderator on AirstreamForums.com where I'm a member and former mod as well (having had Airstreams for twenty years).

We try to camp together a couple of times a year, culminating in the Antique Motorcycle Swap Meet at the Scott County Fairgrounds in Davenport, IA.

John posted a photo chronicle of his days repairing power lines here in Eastern Iowa on ASF.com, and I thought I'd link to it because he has some amazing photos with his story.
So... without further ado... John HD and his March "Vacation" in Iowa:

Storm damage repair in Iowa

Roger

[Gina D.]

uh uh.

[Frederick L. Simson]

I do like Southern California!

[CindyL]

I am homesick! Not!

My cousin said that they were out of power for 3 days.

CindyL

[Roger H]

Cindy, congrats on the UHaul 16'!

Frederick, I moved to NoCal from SoCal in 1990, just after the Loma Prieta quake in San Fran, and lived there for the Northridge quake in LA in 1994. I've been through some horrendous storms in San Diego, and in 1980 sat poised on the rim of Mission Valley with every other policeman in the city to evacuate as many folks as we could get out in 30 minutes as the Rodriguez Dam was thought to be inches away from bursting and a 30' wall of water scouring everything away in the valley. Fortunately the rain stopped just short of causing that event. I've seen funnel clouds over Rancho Bernardo. In NoCal, I lived precariously close to the Forks Fire in Lake County that left nothing but white ash and glassy soil over thousands and thousands of acres. I lived literally in the shadow of Mt. Konocti, a volcano. I've seen Clearlake flood, and a huge land slide from Mt. Konocti take out part of a mobile home park. I've seen the ocean take houses and scour all of the sand beaches down 20' lower to rock. I've seen flash flooding in the Anza Borrego desert. I was in seven typhoons in the three years I lived on Guam, and arrived three days after Supertyphoon Pamela went through in 1976. I've been in a couple of mild hurricanes on the Gulf coast in Florida. I was in the Valley in McAllen Texas Christmas of 2004 when they had the first snow there in 109 years.

A couple of days of a little cold weather in Iowa isn't THAT big of a problem. I'm not sure anywhere else is much better than where I am. You are welcome to keep SoCal, thank you.

Roger