Houston paralyzed by ice storm

John Pape in Disaster News Network: The storm system that has been wreaking havoc with much of the nation all week on Friday all but shut down Houston, paralyzing the nation’s fourth-largest city under a coat of ice. The ice essentially shut down the Houston metropolitan area, forcing the closure of the freeway system in the metropolitan area of 5 million people. Schools and businesses closed for the day as local officials urged people to stay home and off the street.

Houston, which rarely sees snow or freezing weather, was expecting snow Thursday night; however, temperatures initially stayed warmer than expected and the anticipated precipitation instead fell as rain. Then, as the city dropped below the freezing mark, the coating of moisture quickly turned into a sheet of ice.

County Judge Ed Emmett, who is the chief elected officer in Harris County, called that scenario “the worst of all possible situations.” He said the icy conditions even kept sand trucks and emergency vehicles from doing their jobs.

Emmett said the county had staged sand trucks at spots throughout the county, ready to respond to problem areas. When the entire freeway system became coated with ice, there was little that could be done, he said….

A generic shot of some iced over leaves -- not from the Houston storm. By Robert Lawton, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license