Ice

The great Louisville Ice Storm of 2009 is now a thing of the past. There are still remnants all over the city, but for the most part everything is back to normal. Normal, that is, except for those 7,000 homes in Louisville still without power, the ice still on some roads, the countless downed tree branches, and the damaged cars all over the city.



This storm was one of the most insane things I've ever witnessed. To start, this was the second largest power outage in the history of Louisville. The first occurred back in September when we felt the wrath of Hurricane Ike. On both occasions my house dealt with downed tree branches and no power. I believe both times we didn't have power for about 4-5 days. I know this time we lost power at about 3:00 AM Wednesday morning and got it back some time late Sunday morning. Of course, it was cold as balls outside and at one point it was 38 degrees inside my house. I actually slept there, in the basement which was somehow warmer than upstairs, for 2 nights before putting my dog in a kennel and crashing elsewhere. On the plus side, all we had to do with our milk was leave it on the counter and it stayed cold...seriously.



I went running in Louisville Sunday morning. Remember now, the storm hit Monday night and most of Tuesday. On Sunday during this run, I ran through probably 2 miles of un-plowed roads. And some of these roads were well-travelled and hilly. Now I understand ice is a pain in the ass to clean up and if the weather stays cold it's even harder, but I don't think there's any excuse for any street in metro Louisville to be a sheet of ice 4 DAMN DAYS after the storm!!!! Once again, this city shows how unprepared it is for winter weather, despite all its big talk and pictures of mounds of salt lying in wait. Well, I'll give credit to our electric crews for doing their best to restor power while the lines were covered in ice.



Last time we had branches down in our house, we got quite ignorant with them. Instead of hauling them in a truck to the local tree branch dropoff that was set up, we chose to drop a few branches down the stree in the yard of a neighbor who had an entire tree down in his yard. We figured he wouldn't notice. We may do the same again, except we have a lot more branches down this time. We stall can't walk a direct line from our front door to our cars in the driveway. Listening to tree branches slide down our roof and into our front and back yards every 10 minutes or so on Tuesday night was a great way to soothe ourselves to sleep.

All in all it was a great week. I credit this week, especially the two nights I spent in the cold house, for my current sore throat and congestion that is ailing me. Thank you Louisville, for your exciting and ever-changing weather patterns!!