The Massive Storm That Covered Indiana In Ice In 2009 Will Never Be Forgotten
By Tori Jane|Published December 21, 2021
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Tori Jane
Author
Tori Jane is a storm chaser, writer, photographer, and the village idiot - in that order. When she's not out and about dancing with the meanest storms on planet Earth for funsies she can be found wandering, shooting landscapes, writing, editing photos, and otherwise up to no good. Legend has it that she can also be occasionally spotted typing up short bios in the third person, but those rumors are unsubstantiated.
Indiana is no stranger at all to a good, heavy snowstorm, and occasionally we’ll get quite a doozy. But sometimes, nature decides to get a little crazy about things, and it’ll throw a major wrench in our winter plans. Sometimes, heavy snowfall isn’t enough; sometimes, Mama Nature decides to coat everything – and we mean everything – in a layer of thick, heavy ice, and when she does that, well, we’re kind of at her mercy. A prime example of her devastating frozen power is the ice storm event that occurred primarily over Indiana and Kentucky in January of 2009.
The ingredients came together perfectly: a couple of low-pressure systems hitched a ride along a stationary front that had decided to park itself directly over the region.
These low-pressure systems would be the harbingers of one of the roughest winter storms on record; on the evening of Monday, January 26th, what's called a "wintery mix" moved into the area and thus, it began.
It started as a light drizzle across the Midwest and some of the central plains.
Quickly, the drizzle turned to sleet, and the sleet eventually transitioned to snow. About six inches fell across southern Indiana and Kentucky, but the weather was not about to call it quits.
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On Tuesday, January 27th, the on-again-off-again sleet and snow turned into freezing rain.
This was when things really took a turn for the worse; the freezing rain froze in layers on just about everything it landed on, creating the perfect recipe for icy disaster.
Overnight on Tuesday, as temperatures plunged again with nightfall, the freezing rain again turned to snow; as a result, the layers of water and ice from the day's on-again-off-again freezing rain, rain, and snow mix (that "wintery mix" we mentioned) hardened into several thin layers of ice that accumulated to at least an inch thick.
Now, sure, one inch of ice doesn't sound that bad, but when it coats literally every surface there is to coat outdoors, bad things begin happening.
Frozen tree limbs crashed to the ground, and across Kentucky and southern Indiana hundreds of thousands of homes were left without power when powerlines also collapsed under the weight of the ice.
To make matters worse, once the final layer of ice had formed, it snowed one more time, adding a new layer of about five inches of snow to the ice that was already creating serious problems.
Indiana was, miraculously, somehow spared the very worst of it despite having been hit hard.
Kentucky bore the brunt of it, losing 24 lives to the icy nightmare. It took over a week to restore electricity to the hardest-hit areas of Indiana and Kentucky, and it's a miracle things weren't much, much worse than they already were.
The perfect mixture of conditions had ensured that Indiana and surrounding states saw a winter storm they'll never forget.
What’s the worst winter storm you remember? Tell us about it in the comments! We love hearing from you – you might just see your winter storm of choice featured someday!
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