Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by txlpo78 1949 days ago
Central Texas has been getting a lot of freezing rain this weekend, as opposed to outright snow or sleet. I know this has caused a lot of power line and tree damage (because it causes water to cling to trees and freeze into ice, whereas snow doesn’t accumulate as much on trees). I would imagine freezing rain would have similar effects on wind turbines.
1 comments

Austin TX here, it's the most bizarre thing I've seen. All trees, all objects, have a thin (couple mms) shell of clear ice. Evenly distributed all the way around, and then icicles on the bottom. It all appeared that first day (Thursday?) when we first had freezing temperatures and there was moderate rain at the same time. All of the trees are sagging, several branches have fallen just within the view of my house.
Walking around my yard this evening and the green vegetation that froze over crunched like potato chips. I'm from the Midwest so familiar with the cold, but I had never experienced that sensation before.