Talk:December 2008 Northeastern United States ice storm

Sources

If you use AP/AFP via Google News (or Yahoo News) make sure to have it webcited (http://www.webcitation.org) or the links are gone after 30 days. Please make sure to use stable weblinks. --Matthiasb (talk) 11:44, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the help! upstateNYer 16:36, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Rename to shorter title?

I think we should rename this article to pull it in line with North American ice storm of 1998 and January_2007_North_American_ice_storm. No need to put that extra info in the title. I recommend North American ice storm of 2008 since it lines up well with the 1998 one and we know there's not going to be another one in 2008. Soap ^Talk/_{Contributions} 03:37, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree the title should be shortened, but it appears there might be another bout of ice within the next few days; if that's the case, North American ice storms of December 2008 sounds appropriate. Otherwise, I would be in favor of moving to North American ice storm of December 2008. –Juliancolton ^{Happy Holidays} 03:41, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Ah, just what we need as the rebuilding of the power grid finishes up ... another ice storm. Well at least the repair crews are already here. But the reason I'm interested in shortening the title is that this article is up for WP:DYK status at Template_talk:Did_you_know#Candidate_entries and one of the reviewers mentioned that the lead-in was longer than is optimal. Since the nominator at that page is also the creator of this page, I figured he might be willing to change the name of the page. ... one other thing though, is it better to have the month in the title? Should January be added to the 1998 article as well? I'll trust your judgment since I don't have any experience editing weather articles. Soap ^Talk/_{Contributions} 03:51, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, when articles are nominated for DYK, the title is usually pipe-linked to shorten the hook, so that shouldn't be a problem. If the article is still to be moved (which I agree on), I think the month is necessary in the title; as severe as the storm was, it wasn't catastrophic like the 1998 storm, which wouldn't be confused with another storm during the year. –Juliancolton ^{Happy Holidays} 14:30, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Juliancolton. I'd also like to point out that no source I've seen (and feel free to shoot me down with a new one) mentions this storm extending into Canada. In looking at North American ice storm of 1998 and January 2007 North American ice storm, both of these storms extended into Canada and one claimed it started in the Rio Grande Valley (which means it must have been in Mexico too). I have the feeling that their called the "North American" storm because of their large reaches. The ice storm part of this storm only affected NY and NE. I thought about this when naming - I took about 15 min in deciding on a name. The one I came up with I thought was the most accurate. I think if we called this a North American storm, it would be misleading because it only affected a very small portion of NA.

It also annoys me that the other two don't match syntax either: January 2007 North American ice storm and North American ice storm of 1998. Shouldn't one of these be re-named so there is a consistent naming style? So overall I'd disagree with a name change, but obviously I will follow consensus. upstateNYer 17:09, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

North American appears somewhat wrong to me. Northamerica includes all from Mexico up to Alaska an the northest Canadian islands. --Matthiasb (talk) 18:36, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree, now that I think about it more. What about Northeast United States ice storm of December 2008? –Juliancolton ^{Happy Holidays} 18:56, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Personally I don't like the use of United States as a modifier since it isn't something you'd normally say in a sentence. I still like the original title that had "North American" in it, but if that is not good, then my 2nd choice would be American ice storm of January 2008. Soap ^Talk/_{Contributions} 22:11, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

The title of this article simply isn't descriptive enough. To the casual reader, "northeast" could mean the northeast of anywhere. I suggest it be renamed to either:
-December 2008 American Northeast ice storm
-December 2008 Northeast American ice storm
-December 2008 New England ice storm (it was largely confined to this region, but the introduction can elaborate)
Any thoughts?
~Asarlaí 03:02, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

DYK Nomination

I just wrote a new alternate (ALT 2) for the DYK nomination, which I think includes all the vital parts of this story. I mentioned it was the worst storm in a decade rather than 21 years since it has been the worst storm in a decade for all parts affected, where as it was the worst in 21 years for only one area affected by the storm. Feel free to visit and comment. upstateNYer 21:49, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Why not say "over a decade", to clarify the issue? –Juliancolton ^{Happy Holidays} 21:50, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

opening picture

The opening picture far from adequately portrays the extent of the damage suffered by many areas affected by this storm. Many roads looked like a hurricane had hit them. The opening picture should be more drastic so people will be like "holy shit!" and I can be like "that's right bitch, it happened in NEW ENGLAND!"

It all comes down to whether there's a better picture by someone who happened to have a digital camera with them at the right time and happens to be a Wikipedia user. I saw a road where the ice-covered side of a tree broke off and blocked the whole road, but I was too busy with other stuff to go back and take a picture. Soap ^Talk/_{Contributions} 23:40, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Yea, I'd have no problem with a replacement if it were higher quality and showed better more (more appropriate wording added) damage. I saw much worse that this, but you only have your camera with you so much of the time... upstateNYer 05:38, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

I have a number of high quality pictures that I took myself. I'd like to add them to the gallery, and some may be good for the article picture. Although I've been a member for 3 years now I've only made three or so edits, and so I can't upload photos. I don't want to spam edits either. If anyone would like to walk me through what I should do to get these photos up online, email me at peteyproductions (at) gmail dot com. Petey05 (talk) 22:28, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

You should be able to upload them to Wikimedia Commons right away four days after creating an account there [1]. If you don't already have an account there you can create one now: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:First_steps. Or, you could upload them here, all you need is four more edits, and I dont think anyone will mind. Soap ^Talk/_{Contributions} 22:50, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Petey05 (talk) 02:28, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Figured it out, added them in! Petey05 (talk) 03:52, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I have just uploaded a picture I took in Troy during the storm, shows a rather large tree down in the middle of the road. It's in the gallery, but I'm no photographer so it's not a great picture, if someone feels like it, switch it with the opening image. 76.15.12.46 (talk) 21:30, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Could you please link to the image? Thank you. –Juliancolton ^{Tropical Cyclone} 21:38, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm gonna guess that it's this image by JDougherty and that he just forgot to log in. I think it's a great image, and would be in favor of a switch. Soap ^Talk/_{Contributions} 21:42, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Good move. I like that image much better than mine. upstateNYer 18:44, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. –Juliancolton ^{Tropical Cyclone} 18:48, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I added an image from Clifton Park, New York to the gallery which dictates the tree's down as well as power lines from the storm. I don't wanna add it to the main picture but if someone feels that it would be a good picture for it, feel free. (74.67.44.125 (talk) 22:28, 2 March 2009 (UTC))

Personal Experience

First of all, I got to say.....................wow! I was one of the many millions in the area that experience this "spectacle". I never thought that is was so bad that it could get it's own wiki page, but I was wrong. So anyways, I remember waking up on the day after the ice made my neighborhood look like Jadis's castle. It was cold, there was ice all around, and of course, fallen branches. I was surprised that none of these fallen branches had hit my mail box. So I also see that my dad pulled the cars into the lawn because he thought the branches above the driveway would fall and wreck the cars. The cars ended up stuck in the lawn, and my mom was really upset. The cars eventually got out, but the left side of the lawn got messed up. We filled it back up long after the ice storm. Driving around in the neighborhood during the aftermath makes running around in the battlefields of World War II look easy. We couldn't get one of those generators. We tried to go to the farthest store possible to get a generator, but it turned out others had the same idea. It's like they traveled to Califonia just to get one of them. Of course, the power was out too. With it out, we couldn't conduct heat, which meant we couldn't stay at our own house except when it was night time. We also had birds which would not survive the weather, so we took them to my dad's work place which wasn't affected by the storm. My dad's work place is where we spent most of our days at. After about........... a week and two days I believe, we finally got back our power, and finally got back into our own house, but we still keep our birds at my dad's work place, because we didn't feel like lugging them back. So that's my personal experience. If you don't believe this, that's fine. I'm not forcing you to. I hope you enjoyed reading this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Defender miz (talk • contribs) 13:20, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I think the word you want is generator. -- Soap ^Talk/_{Contributions} 15:00, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I absolutely believe your story, it's not far off from my own family's experience of the post-storm weeks. Major difference being we were lucky enough to have a generator, and a wood burning stove, with plenty of freshly fallen trees to burn, once we had extracted them from our roof that is. One 60+ foot tall Evergreen tree came down, missing crushing my nearly brand new car by inches. 22 days later our power was finally restored, though it took Comcast another several weeks to rewire our street for cable, and Verizon nearly a month to fully restore our landline phone service.

Looneybunny (talk) 06:35, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

External links modified

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Power outages longer than the two weeks mentioned

In areas of North Central Massachusetts served by New Hampshire utility company Unitil, electrical service was not restored in some cases for three weeks+. I'll try to find some official sources, before making any change to the time frames mentioned in the article, however having lived through the 2008 Ice Storm, I could personally testify to that fact. Power in our neighborhood was not restored until late in the afternoon of Day 22, and was nearly pushed back to at least Day 23 post-storm, if not for a crew of out-of-state linemen who by chance were driving through the area, and seeing we were still without power worked into the night to fully restore service. We learned afterwards that Unitil itself was completely unaware that power to our street had not already been restored, and had no work orders pending. Looneybunny (talk) 06:30, 19 February 2021 (UTC)