Similar scenes played out from Missouri to Virginia as ice coated power lines and trees from Jan. 5-6, leading to widespread power outages.
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00:00Now we go to AccuWeather meteorologist Tony Laubach. He joins us from Harrisburg, Illinois, where many residents are still without power this afternoon.
00:10Tony, probably a scary situation for the folks there. Can you dive in a little bit more?
00:18Yeah, we're definitely dealing with a lot of issues here, and part of that is kind of what you're seeing right here over my shoulder.
00:24One of these large pine trees taken down by the weight of the ice. This actually coming across the road.
00:30Crews haven't cleaned this up earlier in the day, but this is what a lot of folks are dealing with right now, trying to restore power.
00:37You have to navigate scenes like this where you have trees, massive trees, that have come down on many of these area roads.
00:43And a lot of rural residents certainly are going to be feeling the effects of these power outages for quite some time.
00:48But when you factor in that heavy ice that is knocking down trees, along with lines that look like this, you're in a recipe for trouble.
00:55You have some very thick ice, over a half an inch of ice, weighing down a lot of these power lines.
01:01And if that isn't enough to take down those power issues, or make those power issues worse on their own,
01:06then you start bringing down the weight of trees that come down on these lines, and then that is when you're starting to see the issues.
01:12We talked to some crews with Amaran. They're talking to a lot of the residents in the Harrisburg area that are without power.
01:17Hopefully it should be restored by about 8 o'clock tomorrow.
01:20But this is an issue all across southern Illinois, right along the Route 13 corridor.
01:24A lot of residents I've talked to who have been without power since yesterday are finding some creative ways to keep warm today.
01:31We haven't had power since 11 last night.
01:34And I heard that transformer pop.
01:37There's one pop over there. I think their power's back on.
01:41And then all of a sudden, we've been freezing since 11 last night.
01:45This is the way we're keeping warm. We're having some coffee here.
01:48I guess I may go get some hot dogs.
01:54When you look at the power outages that are across the region here, tens of thousands of folks in Illinois without power alone.
02:01And again, that is mainly the southern part of the state where we saw the heaviest ice.
02:05Really, what we call the South 13 counties in this part of the country here.
02:09Really along State Route 13.
02:12So areas from Murfreesboro, Carbondale, which includes SIU, which is closed today.
02:17Heads up to Marion and then here to Harrisburg.
02:19From this point and then areas further down to the south, those are the hardest hit areas with some of the bigger ice totals.
02:25We'll show you those coming up here in a little bit.
02:27But a half an inch of ice or more in some places.
02:30I've personally measured even six-tenths up to three-quarters of an inch in some isolated spots in this stretch.
02:36So that is the bad news of that.
02:38The good news is, though, minus the debris that is laying across a lot of the roads, the road conditions themselves are not too bad, Jeff.
02:46We've seen a lot of the crews out really taking care of the roads.
02:48In fact, most of my drive on the major routes were pretty dry in most of the lanes.
02:53We still had some issues with some blowing snow over some areas.
02:56And of course, the back roads are going to be a little icy.
02:58So all of this is going to take days to clean up.
03:00And as you mentioned, no warm-up in sight.
03:02So it's going to be a while before this ice and snow sticks around.
03:05All right, Tony. Well, thanks for that report there.
03:06Familiar territory for you there in southern Illinois.
03:09Good stuff.