7 Deaths Blamed on Icy Midwest Storm

Jan 14, 7:17 AM (ET)

By MARCUS KABEL
mywaynews

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) - A crippling winter storm lashed the central part of the nation with another blast of freezing rain, sleet and snow Saturday, causing widespread power outages and tying up highways and airports.

The storm was expected to continue through the weekend, laying down a coat of ice and snow from Texas to Illinois, where an ice storm warning was in effect through Monday morning.

"We're in the middle of this storm," said Joe Pedigo, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in St. Louis. "Friday was the first of three waves." (Read the whole story here.)

This is a big event if you live somewhere in the path of this storm especially for some place like Oklahoma where we are not used to getting a lot of winter precipitation. At least where I live we haven’t got a lot of ice so far, just a lot of sleet. At my house we got at least 4 inches of sleet. I don’t know about you, but I have never seen sleet drift or this deep. Here are some pictures from my front porch. The first one shows my water hose box and how the sleet has drifted against the box. The other picture is of my flower bed, which needs a lot of work. That will give me something to do when it finally thaws out.

What was weird about this big 3 day storm was that it was thundering and lightening while it was sleeting. But I remember during the big Ice Storm Oklahoma had in 2001, it did that too. I was lucky to have just gotten sleet. Many others have gotten freezing rain and ice. Not just a little ice, but inches of ice that gets on power lines and trees and makes them break. And then people do not have electricity and that usually means they don’t have any heat. If they live in a rural area, they don’t have water either, because the pumps to their water wells are run off of electricity too. Usually people in rural areas that lose their power are the last to get power back because Electric Companies always restore power to hospitals and populated areas before they get to rural areas. So please keep those people in your prayers because it is going to be really tough on them until they can get their power back. Here are some more pictures of the Big Winter Storm of 2007.

I got these pictures off of an Oklahoma City TV station website.Their viewers had sent in a lot of pictures they had taken. If you would like to view the whole slideshow, you can do so by clicking here.