The science and power behind ice storms
Last week, while much of the state got rained on, I got iced.
I live on the northeast edge of Litchfield County. In my town, and the towns nearby, it was cold enough at ground level that the rain froze when it fell on tree limbs, railings and clotheslines. The birches in my yard were suitably bent.
A lot of this had to do with elevation and cold pockets of air — when I drove east, downhill, the ice was a no-show.
Nor did the rain — which forecasters first thought might glaze larger parts of Fairfield and Litchfield counties — freeze much of anything there.
“We measured .08 inches of ice,’’ said Gary Lessor, director of The Weather Center at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury. “We knew by Saturday it would be less than a tenth.’’
Matt Spies, of Brookfield — state coordinator of CoCoRHAS, the Community Collaborative Rain Hail and Snow Network, which uses a corps of volunteers to collect precipitation data — said by the time he checked his gauges, the little ice that might have been was washed away.
“I got a half-inch of rain,’’ Spies said
This is one of the problems of ice storms — they can weigh heavily in some towns, and lighten up a few miles away. They’re largely unstudied and hard to calibrate. Rain falls into gauges, snow gathers on the ground.
But how do you measure ice — radially, on the branch of a tree, or horizontally, on top of a flat surface?
But when the temperatures and storm patterns line up correctly, they have the potential to do serious damage to the environment, as well as make human lives miserable. The events of last week showed that, with icing shutting down a good part of the Southwest U.S.
Because that storm caused minimal problems here, we could dismiss it as something happening in Texas. But the rain and ice we got was part of the same system that proved a killer down south.
“These are massive winter storms,’’ said Bill Jacquemin, senior meteorologist at the Connecticut Weather Center in Danbury.
Ice storms happen when a layer of warm air flows into a column of cold winter air, while a narrow layer of freezing-temperature air gets trapped at the earth’s surface. If snow falls, the warm air melts it into rain. When it hits the earth, it freezes on contact.
Jacquemin said a hard, steady rain doesn’t convert into an ice storm, because the rain washes away the ice as it forms. What’s needed is sustained drizzle and mist. Then, the ice accumulates.
When that happens, the weight of the ice downs tree limbs. Those falling branches, in turn, take down power lines and make travel treacherous.
“Even if there’s a blizzard, people think they can drive, if they give themselves more time,’’ Lessor of Western’s Weather Center said. “People are afraid of ice.’’
New England generally gets a moderate ice storm every five to 10 years and a severe one every 35 to 85 years.
In 1898, a severe ice storm shut down the state’s Northwest Connecticut, with witnesses saying the sound of tree limbs cracking reminded them of July 4 fireworks.
On Dec. 16, 1973, another severe ice storm caused a third of the state to lose power. That storm caused more damage to Connecticut’s trees than the Great 1938 Hurricane.
There has been recent work to study ice storms and how they work.
In the winters of 2015-16 and 2016-17, researchers at the 7,800-acre Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire’s White Mountains created the first man-made ice storms, using fire hoses to spray trees with water on freezing nights.
What the research team found was that at a quarterinch of ice or less, trees suffered minimal damage. At a half-inch or more, the branches started falling.
The team estimated that a heavy ice storm could bring down a year’s worth of woody debris in one night. The trees also suffered wounds that did not heal readily. Where icing was heaviest, the damage opened the forest canopy, letting more light onto the forest floor.
Lindsey Rustad, a research ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service, who led the ice storm research at Hubbard Brook said that with climate change making extreme weather events more frequent, it’s important to better understand how ice storms work.
“They happen from Texas to New England to Oregon’’ she said. “They happen all over the world.’’
Anthony Santella was trying to help his father schedule COVID-19 vaccine appointments, but he says he was twice denied at one facility.
Santella, who lives on Long Island, had easily scheduled his father, an 81-year-old Norwalk resident, for his first dose of COVID-19 vaccine at the Norwalk Community Health Center. But he was unable to get an appointment for his father to get the second dose there.
He tried to find his dad a second appointment, through the state’s Vaccine Administration Management System website, and by calling around, including to Stamford Hospital.
“After an hour on hold, I was told that I can’t schedule a second dose if he hadn’t had the first there,” Santella said, adding he called a week later and was told the same thing.
Stamford Hospital spokeswoman Andrea Jodko said she was surprised to hear that anyone had been turned away for their second dose since “that isn’t our policy.”
She said people are encouraged to schedule both shots at the hospital, but staff should not reject anyone who didn’t receive the first dose with Stamford Health.
“In line with guidance from the state, we recommend that individuals receive their first and second doses from the same facility; however, we do not require it,” Jodko said in an email.
Santella said he eventually scheduled his father’s second dose appointment at the Norwalk Senior Center.
But now he’s trying to schedule an appointment for his mother, and he’s worried he might encounter the same problems getting a second appointment.
Several other Connecticut hospitals and health facilities said they “encourage” people to get both shots at the same location, but it isn’t mandatory. They also maintain that no one should get turned away for a second dose at a location just because they didn’t receive their first dose there.
“We are not ‘requiring’ it, but we are encouraging individuals to get their first and second dose at the same clinic for tracking and supply purposes,” said Amy Forni, a spokeswoman at Nuvance Health — which includes Danbury, New Milford, Norwalk and Sharon hospitals. “However, we are not turning anyone away if they scheduled an appointment for a second dose at one of our clinics, but got their first dose elsewhere.”
State Department of Public Health spokeswoman Maura Fitzgerald said there’s a reason that providers prefer people to get both shots at the same location.
“Currently, the second dose inventory is sent to the provider location that administered the first dose, so it makes things logistically simpler for people to get their second dose where they got their first dose,” Fitzgerald said.
Another benefit of getting both shots at the same location is that providers can be sure that patients are receiving both doses of the same vaccine, said Dr. Zane Saul, chief of infectious disease at Bridgeport Hospital.
He said patients whose first dose was of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine should not receive the Moderna vaccine as a second dose, and vice versa.
“The whole idea is you want to get the same vaccine, optimally at the same place,” Saul said. “But we understand that scheduling has been a nightmare and there are a lot of variables. People run out of vaccine, and I know the weather has been a factor (in scheduling).”
But if people do get their second shot at a different location than their first, Saul said they need to bring their vaccine card to ensure they are getting the correct dose.
In many cases, people want to get both shots at the same location whenever possible, said Andrea Boissevain, director of health at the Stratford Health Department. “It’s often close to home, they are familiar with the set up, et cetera.” she said.
Whenever possible, Boissevain said, Stratford’s staff tries to schedule people for their second appointment before they leave the clinic when they receive the first dose. Yet, she pointed out that people don’t have to get both doses at the clinic.
“We don’t require it — we just require that they get the same vaccine,” she said.