USA news on Youtube Jan 5 2018

Twenty years ago this month, much of the state was coping with an icy disaster: downed power

lines, toppled trees, impassable roads, frozen pipes and darkness for nights on end.

Schools turned into shelters, power crews worked feverishly around the clock and Mainers

pulled together, offering hot showers and cups of coffee and swapping stories about

surviving the Ice Storm of '98.

The ice storm crept in overnight in early January and caught almost everyone off guard.

And residents like Deb Conway of Poland were in the dark as the woods around her house

exploded with falling tree limbs.

"And for the first two days all we heard was — it sounded like huge gunshots really

close.

We would hear 'bang' and then 'crack, crack, crack' as the ice would fall off

the trees when the tops of the trees would come down," she says.

Conway, her husband and three kids were without power for 13 days.

In parts of Maine this was not unusual — more than half a million people were plunged into

darkness.

Families like the Conways found ways to cope in frigid temperatures without electricity,

running water and little to no heat, in some cases.

Then Gov. Angus King declared a state of emergency.

He and his young son visited emergency shelters, where King says he learned the importance

of showing up and having something to offer to people in need.

"So we stopped at a Dunkin' Donuts here in town and walked in and I looked at the

rack and said, 'I'd like all of them please.'

And a lady behind me said, 'Could I just have one chocolate cruller before you take

'em all?'

So we bought all the doughnuts that they had and distributed them to shelters.

And that was a psychological gesture of kind of reassurance.

And that's what I learned, was how important it was to be physically present and visible

during that period," he says.

Not since Hurricane Gloria in 1986 had Maine's largest electric utility seen so many outages.

Hundreds of crews from other states were called to Maine to help out.

Central Maine Power Co. spokesman Mark Ishkanian was on the hot seat for two weeks straight.

He marveled at the stories he heard in CMP's cafeteria during those dark days that he says

also marked some of Maine's finest hours.

"Things like a stranger coming in and picking up a check to pay for a crew's meal at a

restaurant, or an elderly couple inviting a crew into a house to have a venison roast

that had just been thawing out in their freezer.

And just the sheer goodness of people in very trying conditions," he says.

Ishkanian recalls one utility crew from Rhode Island saying that if they were facing their

customers on day seven of a midwinter outage, they'd likely require police protection.

Yet in Maine, they were encountering residents who were bringing them food and baking them

cookies.

One of the highlights of the ice storm was a visit by Vice President Al Gore who, after

a tour of the damage, committed a faux pas when he picked up a downed power line and

posed for cameras.

That prompted some headline writers to invoke CMP's famous mantra: "No line is safe

to touch, ever."

Even back then, Gore was hinting at how the ice storm was a sign of global warming and

the havoc it could cause.

"In the days and years to come, let's all tune into this debate about what the scientists

are saying is more common disasters and see what we can do to prevent them," he said.

During the first week of the ice storm, Maine Things Considered hosts Charlotte Albright

and Keith Shortall compiled an unusual list of statistics to shed light on how Mainers

daily lives were upended.

"Three out of four calls to the HQ store in Bangor have been requests for generators.

At the height of the storm the waiting list for those generators was 500.

In Portland, more than 1,000 people had to be turned away for lack of supplies," Albright

said.

"Number of lightbulbs sold this week at Blake's Family Hardware in Waterville: none.

Number of kerosene heaters left at Blake's Family Hardware: none.

Increase in sales at Charlie's Pizza in Augusta: 20 percent," Shortall said.

"And the waiting list of people wanting to be put up in the Fairfield Inn in Bangor

Friday and Saturday: 100," Albright said.

And that's how life unfolded during the first few weeks of Jan. 1998.

Deb Conway of Poland says after cooking on a grill in the dark and changing baby diapers

without water for 10 days, she finally took up a friend's offer to go stay with her

in Massachusetts.

Conway and many others say they did learn one thing from the ice storm: that they take

a lot for granted and that next time they'll try to be more prepared.

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For more infomation >> Memories of the Ice Storm 20 years ago (1998)- USA Hot News - Duration: 5:04.

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Winter Storm Grayson- The temperature drop in Florida posed a threat to life- USA Hot News - Duration: 7:08.

The cold has been unrelenting.

One day after delivering Tallahassee's first measurable snowfall in decades, Winter Storm

Grayson's push north flung Arctic air toward Florida, sending overnight temperatures in

the Tampa Bay area below freezing.

The temperature drop in Florida posed a threat to life — humans, animals and plants, alike.

Bay area farmers, of both the plant and fish variety, were forced to take precautions to

save their crops.

Aquaculture, the growing of fish, plants and other underwater species, is a roughly $70

million industry and is particularly vulnerable to cold spells like this one, said David Boozer,

the executive director of two Florida aquaculture trade groups.

Hillsborough County has dozens of such fish farms.

Farmers who grow ornamental tropical fish for aquariums — which are most easily disturbed

by the cold weather — have had to cover their fish ponds with a layer of heat-capturing

film to ensure the water doesn't get too cold, Boozer said.

The film works like car windows on a toasty day: it lets sunlight in and holds the heat.

Another strategy is to run well water, which stays a constant 72 degrees, into the ponds.

The animals can become stressed when the water temperature dips below 70 degrees.

Below 50 degrees is imminently dangerous.

"It doesn't take too many hours when you're down in the 30 degrees area for water temperatures

to drop quickly," Boozer said, "especially when there's cold rain and no sunlight."

Wednesday was a particularly challenging day for those farmers, he said, because it was

cloudy in the morning and then cold rain fell into the ponds.

And it never got warmer than the 50s outside.

"I hate to use the term, 'the perfect storm'," he said.

But that's what it was.

For those who grow produce, the cold also means more work and worry.

Strawberry farmers across Hillsborough and the state turned on their sprinklers Thursday

morning so the water would freeze, encasing the berries in a protective layer of ice.

Still, a light freeze can actually be good for a crop.

It makes the fruit sweeter, said Kenneth Parker, executive director of the Florida Strawberry

Growers Association.

"The crop looks great," he said.

Wild animals, too, have been knocked from their normal routine.

More than 300 manatees descended upon Three Sister Springs in Crystal River to enjoy the

spring water, which remains a constant temperature.

Sometimes they huddle near power plant discharge pipes for the same reason, said Dr. Ray Ball,

senior veterinarian at Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa.

"Cold is definitely something we monitor with the manatees," he said, "because they're

tropical mammals and they're at the northern end of their range."

But Ball didn't expect this relatively quick cold snap to threaten the local manatee population.

It takes weeks of prolonged cold, like the 2010 winter, he said, to threaten manatees

en masse.

Individual manatees can find themselves in trouble, though.

There's usually not much food near the springs and power plants, and manatees create a lot

of heat when they eat.

So it's a trade-off, he said, and manatees that choose to venture into cooler water in

search of food risk being stranded if they don't find any.

Humans were still being impacted as well, as thousands of bay area customers lost power

early Thursday and the flight delays extended to Tampa International Airport.

Still, Tampa Bay fared well compared in the Northeast U.S. Grayson's rapid intensification

on Thursday translated to up to a foot of snow, coming down so heavily it caused white-out

conditions.

"This is not that much weaker than (Hurricane) Sandy," said 10Weather WTSP Meteorologist

Bobby Deskins.

Grayson brought Tallahassee its first taste of snow since 1989.

The National Weather Service measured 0.1 inches in the state capital on Wednesday,

and icy roads extended as far south as Lake City, shutting down a portion of Interstate

10.

Social media posts piled up showing big white flakes and a thin coating of powder on Tallahassee

streets and lawns.

About 10,000 Duke Energy customers in Pinellas County awoke Thursday to find they had lost

power, a result, a Duke spokeswoman said, of the low temperatures putting extra stress

on equipment.

That left many unable to heat their homes on one of the coldest mornings of the winter.

The bulk of the outages had been restored later Thursday, spokeswoman Ana Gibbs said,

but "isolated equipment problems are possible, which could result in scattered outages."

Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco and Hernando counties have all made cold weather shelters

available to those who can't find refuge from the temperature.

As the storm marched north, it experienced a rapid loss of air pressure, causing clouds

and wind to spiral around center, reminiscent of a hurricane.

But don't call it that, said 10Weather WTSP meteorologist Grant Gilmore.

"You can't have a hurricane in the winter," he said.

Hurricanes need warm water.

Instead, Grayson is technically a mid-latitude cyclone.

It's quick intensification into a cyclonic storm is called "bombogenesis," meaning it

dropped at least 24 millibars of pressure in less than 24 hours.

Grayson, in fact, dropped more than 50 millibars, one of the most dramatic drops in pressure

on record.

Its central pressure, reported at 951 millibars on Thursday, rivaled that of Superstorm Sandy

in 2012, Deskins said.

And the cyclonic spiral, which spins counterclockwise, shot cold wind our direction as the storm

moved north.

More than 4,300 flight were canceled within, into or out of the U.S. Thursday, according

to flightaware.com, which tracks airlines.

At Tampa International, at least 75 flights were canceled, about 16 percent of the airport's

daily operations, due to the conditions up north.

Most of those were effected by weather in New York and Boston.

And cold temperatures in Tampa forced airport officials to roll out their de-icing equipment

Thursday.

The cold also has an interesting effect on iguanas: they stiffen in chilly temperatures

and can appear dead.

Other wild animals, like panthers and bears, should fare just fine, Ball said.

"These guys are all adapted really well," the veterinarian said.

"It's a short enough blast that I wouldn't expect too many animals to have many problems."

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