The sky is falling, Part 2

This message went out to the media this morning from the North Arkansas Electric Cooperative:

Subject: Ice Storm Alert for the Media and Key Accounts of NAEC

The weather forecasters seem to be in agreement that there is a good chance of a significant ice storm for North Arkansas, in particular all the areas served by North Arkansas Electric Cooperative. They do however disagree somewhat on the amount of ice accumulations, with predictions ranging from .5 inch to 1.5 inches. The latest word we have from the National Weather Service is that the precipitation will begin late this evening, and continue through the night into tomorrow.

Engineers design our systems to withstand a .5 inch layer of ice @ winds of 40 mph .At that level and beyond we begin to see widespread problems. Anything approaching an inch or more, we will see major problems, with significant structural damage to the electric distribution system resulting in outages lasting days (or longer depending on the coverage).

This morning North Arkansas Electric Cooperative is making preparations for the worst case scenario, including contacting cooperatives in south Arkansas to have crews on standby to assist us.These crews will be underway at the first sign of a major ice event.

At this time we are hoping for the best, but planning for the worst. We urge all cooperative members and area residents to be equally as prepared, especially for lengthy, sustained power outages...

Again, we are in full alert mode awaiting whatever cards the weather deals us. We hope it's only an exercise, but will be ready to respond to our members needs.

Based on that cheery note, we went to Lowe's at noon and bought a 23,000 BTU convection kerosene heater and a 5 gallon can of kerosene.

The instructions say it heats up to 1,000 cubic feet and runs 12 hours on a single filling. With any luck, we won't have to take it out of the box, but we've got it if we need it.