Ice Storms Of America

An ice storm is a cold-weather rainstorm, in which the falling water turns to a coating of ice on striking terrestrial objects. The deposit thus formed is smooth and transparent, unless mixed with a previous deposit of snow, and is quite different in appearance from the rough or feathery "rime" often deposited in cold weather by drifting fog, especially in the mountains. The ice formed in the storms is called "glaze" by American meteorologists, and "sleet" (a word of many meanings!) by nearly everybody else in the American half of the English-speaking world. Like the blizzard and the tornado, the ice storm is a specialty of our American climate. Except in a mild and innocuous form, it is uncommon in continental Europe and almost unknown in the British Isles.

In the amount of damage it does in this country it vies with the tornado, though its destruction is less concentrated, and its effects on humanity are troublesome rather than tragic. Its visible havoc is wrought upon the trees and upon the overhead conducting systems of the telephone, telegraph and electric power companies. This consists of breakage under the weight of ice; often fatal in the case of the trees and fraught with far-reaching secondary effects upon the community at large in the case of the broken wires and poles and severed communications. In the eastern United States ice storms are episodes in the conflict between moist, mild winds from the Atlantic and the cold dry winds that sweep outward in winter from the interior of the continent. The colder currents push under the warmer that are forced upward, cooled by expansion, and thus caused to condense their moisture.

This may result in steady and prolonged fall of rain. If the temperature of the lower air is below the freezing point, the icy coating formed on wires and branches grows thicker and thicker, until, in a large percentage of cases, the phase of destructive overloading is reached. The amount of damage is greatly increased if high winds set in after the ice is deposited.

New England has acquired a special reputation for these icy visitations, partly, perhaps, because Mark Twain once penned an exuberant description of their magnificence in that region. They are, however, about equally common throughout a broad central belt extending from the Atlantic seaboard to the Upper Mississippi valley. Oklahoma and Kansas have experienced very severe ice storms, and occasionally they invade the heart of the sunny but not always summery South. Georgia and Alabama had a memorable encounter with one of them early in 1923. The Pacific coast is by no means exempt. The copious precipitation on the western slopes of the Sierras and the Cascades not infreqeuntly takes the form of an ice coating.

By: davidbunch

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