AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reported from southern Illinois on Jan. 6, where a layer of ice was causing significant problems.
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00:00Tony Lombak joins us from Marion, Illinois where many residents are still without power this afternoon. Tony, can you tell us more?
00:12Yeah, we're talking about 37,000 folks here without power across southern Illinois.
00:17And for a lot of folks, that has been an intermittent thing. A lot of people lost power yesterday.
00:22And despite the storm moving on, still people losing power today thanks in part to the ice on the trees,
00:28plus a little bit of wind, which has created some issues across the region here in southern Illinois.
00:32How much ice are we talking about? It's not at the levels that we saw in 2009, but still more impressive nonetheless.
00:38We'll take a look at some of these numbers here. Over a half an inch of ice in many locations across the area.
00:43We saw areas from Cape Girardeau, Marion, Carbondale, really stretching along the Illinois Highway 13 line,
00:50seeing the brunt of the ice for this particular event. A lot of that falling in the form of freezing rain during the day yesterday
00:56into early evening before things started tapering off. And that has left quite the mess behind here.
01:01We'll show you some of the footage. This was a tree that came down on somebody's SUV.
01:05This, I think, is going to be the sum up here. Not this opening panning shot,
01:09but the shot you're looking at from the side here where you see the snow lathered on the side of this poor vehicle
01:14along with the tree that came down in the weight of the ice. It has certainly been a mess across the region.
01:19Folks have been spending most of the day out just chiseling out their cars.
01:23I talked to a couple of residents who were out covering getting a half an inch of ice off their cars.
01:28One guy actually broke his ice scraper as I was talking to him about that.
01:32So we're we're hoping to bring some of that to you here in a little bit.
01:35But many folks that didn't get out and about today kind of staying around indoors.
01:39The good news, though, is a lot of the streets, most of the major roads I traveled on were actually in really good shape.
01:46A lot of the Illinois crews were out in full force overnight tonight treating the roads, getting things cleared.
01:51So despite the major ice that we had, the highways, the streets, not a huge issue.
01:55You get back in some of the neighborhoods, some of the side streets.
01:58That's where you're going to find some of the issues.
02:00And of course, getting in and out of parking lots where a lot of the plows took some of the snow through.
02:04That's going to be an issue here.
02:06We're walking some because it's something that's always interesting with ice storms.
02:09We talk about like ice on power lines and what have you here.
02:11I'm walking on grass and there is a layer of ice over top of the grass.
02:16So it's like I'm walking, think of it like a lightly frozen lake here, Jeff, where you walk on the ice and it kind of cracks beneath your feet.
02:25That is what basically all the grassy surfaces in the area are like right now.
02:30It's like walking on just a frozen lake.
02:32So a lot of ice is going to be sticking around, as you guys mentioned, with the cold for quite some time.
02:37So we're not going to be getting rid of this anytime soon.
02:39Hopefully, though, Ameren talking about some residents that are in more remote areas over toward Harrisburg
02:44may be receiving power as early as tomorrow evening.
02:47So it's going to be a wait for some folks, especially those in the more rural areas could go beyond that.
02:52All right, Tony, familiar real estate for you.
02:54I know they're in southern Illinois.
02:56So thank you for all your reporting over the past few days from St.
02:58Louis into the lower Ohio Valley and beyond.