Interesting ice accumulation on a cup anemometer during an Oklahoma ice storm

The Oklahoma ice storm of 28-30 January 2002 caused more than $100 million in damage and left more than 250,000 residences and businesses without power. The Oklahoma Association of Electric Cooperatives reported over 31,000 electrical poles destroyed by the storm (McManus 2002). The storm also caused numerous problems within the Oklahoma Mesonet (a network of 115 remote meteorological stations across the state; Brock et al. 1995). Wind data from 52 Mesonet stations had to be manually flagged (Fiebrich and Crawford 2001) as erroneous because of ice accretion on the anemometers. To better understand the impact of a severe ice storm on the sensors, Mesonet personnel visited and photographed …