An icy Christmas

Every holiday season people wish for a white Christmas, but this year local residents and most of eastern North Dakota got a little more than they bargained for.

The first local reports of freezing drizzle came in at around 10 p.m. Christmas evening and continued through the night.

By morning, much of the state had been caked in a thick sheet of ice, creating treacherous travel conditions, road closures, car crashes and downed power lines, which of course led to several power outages.

Soon, photos and videos began appearing on social media depicting just how severe the ice storm was, and the North Dakota Department of Transportation had labeled most roads in the area as "no travel advised."

According to Foster County Sheriff Justin Johnson, on Tuesday, Dec. 26 there were three semi-drivers traveling on Highway 200 that found themselves jackknifed due to the icy conditions.

The slick roads didn't bother everyone, however. For those who enjoy ice skating, there was suddenly a massive new ice rink to play on, and several videos posted to social media showed skaters doing exactly that on the streets of Jamestown, N.D.

Meanwhile, thousands were being affected by long-lasting outages.

Much of Carrington was without electricity on Tuesday, and there were several more reports of outages in the city on Wednesday. Some residents near Fargo were going on 30 hours without power as of press time.

On Wednesday, a representative of Otter Tail Power Company told the Transcript that crews were working around the clock to address damage that was still impacting service to several communities in the Jamestown area, such as Gackle, Oriska, Streeter, Cleveland and several others.

Residents in New Rockford, meanwhile, appeared to evade the wave of outages completely.

According to the National Weather Service (NWS) of Grand Forks, ice storms of any kind – let alone one of this caliber – are rare in eastern North Dakota and western Minnesota.

In the past 20 years, only five ice storm warnings have been issued by the NWS in Grand Forks, and there hasn't been a storm with this much ice accumulation since the late 1990s.

The NWS also explained how this ice storm formed and eventually created such treacherous conditions.

"A shallow layer of cold air at the surface causes rain to freeze as it lands on objects," they explained. "This powerful system brought significant warm air above the shallow cold layer at the surface, resulting in widespread freezing rain."

Thankfully, temperatures in the days that followed were above freezing, allowing the roads to begin clearing up on Wednesday. With temps approaching 40 on Friday, residents even got to enjoy a relatively balmy day amid the melting ice and snow.