I live in Barry County in Michigan and we got hit pretty hard with ice. I think at one time 85% of the population was without power starting on Sunday the 22nd. We lost power at 7:30 am on the 22nd and got it back three days later at around 4 am Christmas morning. Some people around the area just got theirs back on today. I lost several of my fish due to no power or heat for the three days we were without. My parents ended up staying with my sister in Grand Rapids for a night where she had power. I had to stay behind because GR was too far for me to drive to work. I work in Battle Creek. So I had to sleep in a house that was only 40 degrees beneath several layers of blankets with several layers of clothes on to keep warm. We had some nights in the teens with daytime highs in the 20's. So grateful for heat and power. Even the cats were miserable and couldn't understand why it was so cold in the otherwise warm house. But the ice and snow made for some really pretty landscapes. Too bad I wasn't able to take pictures of any of it. I worked from sun up to sundown every day and didn't have the time to capture the stark beauty before the last two days of above freezing temps melted it away. Karen

Adellabedella, I love mammatus clouds and think they are the coolest-looking thing. We see them a lot down here along the Red River on severe T-storm type days. If I am in the garden and see them magically 'appearing' in the sky, I drop what I am doing and flip my fire radio over to the NOAA weather channel to listen to it for a while. If I see rapid T-storm development off to our west, south or southwest plus mammatus clouds, I go inside to check the NWS website and the radar. When you watch the weather closely, you soon learn which clouds are a cause for concern and which are not. Sometimes my storm spotter DH comes outside looks at the clouds and tries to drag my inside the house or at least voices his concern that I "should" come inside. Carol, I am sure they got all that rain. I watched their storms on radar all night long. After I attempted to go to sleep, the weather radio went off every 15 minutes for one of the storms out west. All I could think of was that I'd surely be celebrating the great rainfall if I lived there! They've been so dry for so long. And, no, our weather radio isn't set for that county because it is so far west, but it is set for counties closer to it, like Montague County in TX, and Jefferson, Carter and Garvin Counties in OK. A lot of the storms that were hitting Cotton County were eventually brushing parts of the counties we do have programmed into the radio, so the thing kept going off. I didn't sleep much and was tempted to turn the darn thing off but would never do that for safety reasons, of course. George, I'm glad you got rain. Y'all sure did need it. That's a bit too close for a funnel cloud though! Dawn

I walked home to check on the palms last night Mike- it was like an Arctic wasteland-unbelievable! Half of my G-house collapsed,it was a good thing I checked it,I think part of it had to be laying on the space heater. I turned of all the power-there is really no reason to heat with that much snow on everything. Supposed to be -12 tonight,maybe. I figure the snow will insulate everything-gotta leave it as it lays until the lows get into the teens again in a few days. This is about the time of year when I question whether I will continue with this hobby- SPRING usually helps me forget all the white stuff pretty quick- there is a lot to forget on the ground right now,I would guess 15"+ but there's no way to know exactly....... Forgot to mention,the rest of it(G-house) collapsed this morning )-:

Being a 61 year old born and raised Okie, from my view, I've seen the interest in storm cellars change over my lifetime. Growing up in the 50's and 60's, our family always had a cellar ( or a " fraidy hole " ) as my Grandmother called them. And we spent a lot of time in the cellar. My Grandfather worked for the Carter Oil company in Seminole ( which eventually became Exxon ) . He moved there around 1930 when the Seminole oil field was booming. Back then, the oil companies would build camps for their employees to live, because there was no housing, and the Carter Oil camp had two big concrete cellars installed by the company. One of them right next to my Grandad's house. But everybody had access. Then when he retired and moved into Seminole, he had a cellar built . On stormy evenings, my parents would take us to Grandad's and we spent the entire evening there, with my Grandad watching the clouds. Our warning system consisted of the men of the Seminole Civil Defense, who would take positions out on the outskirts of town and watch for tornados and would give word to blow the sirens. Some neighbors would show up and it became a social event as everyone chatted and passed the time. Around late 70's , my parents built their own cellar, but also that was the time when TV warnings were getting much better. They started using radar. And in my adult life, up till now, I'd never thought a cellar was a good investment because the warnings kept getting better and better. From other people I've talked with, they did the same, and houses with cellars become fewer than back in the 1940's and 1950's. My plan had always been to leave the house and go to a sheltered place, like Crossroads Mall. But after the debacle last May 31, when I got caught in traffic because everyone else had decided to get out of the storm's path, I then decided I needed a shelter. Its like we've come full circle, from a time that lack of any warning made a cellar almost a necessity, to warnings making cellars less important, to a time when the warnings are so good, we need a shelter again. This post was edited by LCDollar on Thu, Jan 23, 14 at 20:16