Below this introduction is my attempt at “live blogging.” If this is the first time you’ve seen this post, read the intro and then jump to the bottom and work your way up to follow how things went in “real” time.
We appear to have been inside what Ryan Hall, and perhaps other meteorologists, referred to as the “warm thumb,” a thumb-shaped segment of warm air that carried rain rather than freezing rain. In other words, we got lucky and most of the freezing rain missed us.
I know that many were not as lucky and that ice and snow are piling up all over the country. I also read that ten states have places with a foot or more of snow. I expect my oldest daughter has close to that much by now.
Locally, I know a woman whose power went out right before the Broncos kicked a field goal and she had to text people to find out if they made it. (They didn’t.) I look at our power company’s outage map for the state, and the number of outages has climbed as high as high as 45,000. The highest number I have seen in the media is 1.3 million people across the country lost power. Compared to what they led us to believe, that; snot bad.
In comparison to many, we got lucky. At least so far.
That’s right, I said “so far.” I am a strong believer in it not being over until its over, and I wont be calling this over until the sun is shining and the temperatures rise above freezing for a couple days in a row. Otherwise, we could still experience downed lines, frozen roads, and frozen water lines.
Do I regret filling my spare gas cans, making a Walmart run, and carrying all that firewood inside? Not at all. Better safe than sorry is more than a prepper’s mantra, it’s our lifestyle.
11:09 p.m., January 25, 2026
I am just in from walking the dog, and every bit of ice is gone. It is also a few degrees above freezing. I consider both to be unexpected and good news.
It appears the rain, which was quite heavy at times, was warm enough to melt the slushy stuff I was worried would harden into ice. It’s still wet outside, and there is a bit of mist or fog that may harden onto surfaces as ice if the temperatures fall below freezing overnight, but the result is unlikely to be as slippery as it was 12 hours ago.
We did have two close calls earlier, when the power blinked out for a second. These were sever enough that our streaming services stopped and the TVs went black. In both cases, I looked at my app, but we were still getting power from the grid, not our batteries. So far, we have not needed our solar power system or its backup batteries. Nonetheless, I am glad to have them!
3:46 p.m., January 25, 2026
We are getting heavy and steady rain and the temperature has climbed to 40°F, which I hope is melting the remaining slush. This is one of those times when hot air rises, and because hot air rises, we are warmer on the side of the mountain than they are down in the valley.
Based on the radar maps and what the local TV station showed during the break after the first quarter of the New England at Denver game, I think the danger has largely passed. We’re going to be in for some cold weather, and the firewood we’ve stacked up will be needed, but I am no longer worried about a potential ice storm with mass outages.
11:23 a.m., January 25, 2026
Unlike an estimated 1 million people across the South, we have power. We also woke up to above freezing temperatures, which means it warmed up faster than expected. It is now 37°F, and while the ice has melted ff the power liens and tree limbs–a good thing– it is still slippery. In fact, the little piles of sleet on the ground have turned to slush. My fear is they will be even slipperier when things freeze back up. We’re expecting temperatures to drop below freezing and stay there through the end of the week so we could be effectively marooned in our house until we get enough sunshine to evaporate the ice or enough warm temperatures to melt it. On the positive side, the ice has probably melted off the solar panels, so if we are marooned, we can make electricity and keep critical appliances running.
When I walked to dog, I had to step from small pile of gravel to small pile of gravel. It was actually safer to bushwhack through the woods than tit is to walk on the roads. Our network of local friends and neighbors are reporting on the situation at their hours and it appears that there have been salt trucks on main roads but side roads are dangerous. Passes up and over the mountains are either shut down or people are smart enough to stay off them. The media is filled with warnings not to drive. Because it is a weekend, I think most people are heeding them. Schools and county offices are already closed for Monday. I expect it may be a few days before they reopen. No way they will send school buses out in these conditions.
So far, the storm appears to be less bad than expected. Not just here, but across the country. I say “so far” because plenty of snow and ice will continue to fall to our north as places like New York and Boston feel the brunt of it. Still, they are better prepared for winter weather than places like Alabama, Texas and Tennessee.
12:14 a.m., January 25, 2026
Just walked the dog, and it was slippery. It looks like we had a quarter inch or so of sleet followed by a tiny amount of frozen rain. This made the gravel driveway slick because the ice particles filled up the space between the gravel and the freezing rain made the entire surface slick. I had to walk on the edge of the driveway, in the gras or brush, it I wanted to stay on my two feet. The dog fared much better, but she’s got bult0in four-paw drive.
When I first left the house, I thought the precipitation had stopped, but that was not the case. It was snowing, but the snow was so fine it was hard to see. The temperature is about 22°F. If the forecasters are to be believed, this is the coldest it will get tonight. In a surprise, the latest forecasts call for temps to reach above freezing most of tomorrow afternoon. This is a change, and one that will help melt any sleet, snow, or ice on our solar panels.
When I check our utility’s outage map, I see no outages within 50 miles, but I know other folks aren’t so lucky and our luck may not last. Good night, all.
8:02 p.m., January 24, 2026
The freezing rain turned to a wintry mix and then to sleet. There are tiny ice pellets piling up on everything. The temperature has dropped a few degrees to 25°F. I hope that this means more sleet and no more freezing rain.
Every hour the power stays on is a good one!
5:57 p.m., January 24, 2026
The freezing rain has started. It appears to be mixed with sleet, but a thin coating of ice is definitely building up on the tarp covering our woodpile. The temperature is still 28°F, but the moisture makes it feel colder.
3:35 p.m., January 24, 2026
Light snow now, thicker than flurries but not a problem. The weather map shows we are quite close to the line between snow and mixed precipitation, so we are happy to have the snow.
The latest forecast call for our altitude to get half to one-inch of ice. (Yikes!) The valleys should get less. Since most of the power lines and other infrastructure are in the valleys, we have to hope that means fewer downed lines.
11:14 a.m., January 24, 2026
I’m going to try live blogging how we experience what the Weather Channel is calling a “catastrophic” winter storm here in the Appalachians. I hope to update this page several times a day through at least Monday. I’ll only update when something happens, and that might not be until this evening.
If you re-visit the page, be sure to hold down the Alt key and hit the refresh button on your browser to clear the cache and load the latest version of this page. Also, please forgive any typos and the stream of consciousness nature of these post as I am typing on the fly, sometimes on my phone.
Our Current Status
It is a chilly 28°F on the side of our mountain. I don’t know what that means in terms of rain, snow, sleet or freezing rain. There are thick overhead clouds. The wind is mild, less than 10 mph. The only precipitation we’ve had was 20 minutes of snow flurries around 9 a.m. that were gone as fast as they arrived.
The house is a comfortable 70°F. The whole-house batteries are charged to 100 percent. We ran a load of laundry yesterday. The dishwasher is empty. I topped off our firewood supplies. Both wood-burners are lit and producing heat. Our water storage is full. We’ve both had showers this morning to hold us over if we lose water or the power goes out and we have no hot water. We have chili, cornbread, meatloaf, split pea soup, and other “comfort foods” cooked and waiting to be reheated. We can do that on the wood stove, if necessary. Beyond that, we have all our standard preps.
I had to tempt fate by saying we are pretty well prepared, but we’ve done what we can. Now we just have to see what Mother Nature has in store for us. Fingers crossed!
