Arkansas Ice Storm, Day 1

Monday night a storm blew in covering northern Arkansas and southern Missouri with ice by Tuesday morning. There was at least 1 solid inch of ice on everything in sight Tuesday. From power lines and vehicles to trees and grass, nothing escaped the ice. Hundreds of thousands are without power and are stuck in their homes due to fallen trees across their driveways and roads. All Tuesday the drizzling freezing rain continued, making the prognosis for Wednesday even worse. Power lines were snapped absolutely everywhere, thousands of phone lines were down too. Joel and I drove out towards my parent's house and literally had to drive over 7 phone and power lines that were laying across the road. We decided to get a bunch of thermoses full of hot chocolate and coffee and take them around to the emergency power, phone, and road crew workers who were doing all they could in the freezing rain to help out. They were extremely grateful and gracious for the gesture, and we felt good that we maybe warmed up their day just a little. Poor guys. That work has to be miserable. All day you could hear tree limbs and branches breaking off and falling to the ground. With all the ice on each branch, it literally sounds like shot gun blasts every time a branch falls. A friend compared the sounds outside at night to being in Iraq where you could hear it all around you, non-stop. Amazingly, we didn't see many tree parts that fell on people's houses and damaged them. God did a great job of pushing the trees right next to the houses and keeping them from falling directly on top.