North Central Massachusetts Braces for Another Round of Ice

Lessons I Learned from the Ice Storm Three Weeks Ago

Baldwinville - Massachusetts - Barely recovered from the Dec. 12, 2008 ice storm, which overwhelmed Massachusetts and New Hampshire with week-long (and for some almost two weeks) power outages and dangerous falling tree debris, tense residents here in Northern Central Massachusetts, brace for yet another round of ice today (Jan. 7). After not being in session for three weeks, schools reopened Jan. 5, but closed again today in this area just two days later.

In anticipation of today's storm, I spent a good portion of my day Tuesday preparing all our emergency supplies, which were totally depleted after the last ice storm disaster. Everyone in this area learned several valuable lessons about emergency preparedness in the wake of an ice storm.

I want to point out something here; New Englanders are hearty folks who have experienced every type of weather Mother Nature can bestow. No one in this area ignored an ice storm warning on Dec. 12 and was deliberately unprepared.

Many of us watched the weather reports carefully that day and even during the last weather update at 10 p.m., forecasters' predicted a warming trend overnight, which would put an end to any ice build up, which most of them said would "really be nothing." Schools were not closing and everything was running at its normal pace.

That was exactly what happened to the South and West of the state; it warmed overnight and there was no ice. Unfortunately that was not to be our good fortune here in the Northern portion of Massachusetts and we suffered immense devastation in the "really nothing" ice storm.

The most important lesson for those of us living in Worcester County was the fact that we cannot rely on power restoration within a few hours; in my case, it was an exhausting six days without electricity, water or heat, except for my small woodstove, which could not obviously, heat my entire house. My sister, who lives twenty minutes from me in Southern New Hampshire, fared even worse; she was without power for an excruciating eleven days.