I wouldn't stand there if I were you

December 2, 2015 7:52 AM

It's winter in 2007, and there's been an ice storm in Oklahoma. Some of that ice is now adhering to portions of the 1619-foot Sinclair Television Tower in Oklahoma City. And then, bit by bit, some of it isn't. (SLYT)
posted by Devonian (40 comments total)

I'm not sure I would be filming from so close.
posted by TedW at 8:02 AM on December 2, 2015 [4 favorites]

Man, that's so awesome. And I don't mean the big chunks of ice, I mean the big stupidity of the guys filming RIGHT BELOW FALLING ICE.
posted by CrazyLemonade at 8:03 AM on December 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

Isn't this basically just what happens every winter, except with slightly more height? Last winter my city cordoned off entire blocks of sidewalks because of falling ice, and there are buildings at my job that I won't walk near because I can see that ice slipping down the eaves, right towards my head...

But I agree, those people are idiots.
posted by epanalepsis at 8:06 AM on December 2, 2015

It looks like they are under a roof or overhang, I think.
posted by migurski at 8:06 AM on December 2, 2015 [4 favorites]

I kept thinking "why don't these guys get their coworkers to move their cars?"

Cause I'm from Cuba+Florida.
posted by oddman at 8:10 AM on December 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

"Hey Jeff! You gotta see this video I got of your Benz being totaled by a slab of falling ice!"
posted by Splunge at 8:16 AM on December 2, 2015 [7 favorites]

The ice storm in 2007 was historically severe. Conditions were just right to maximize the extent of rain that would freeze on contract with the ground during a relatively heavy December thunderstorm. Oklahoma is no stranger to storm damage and power outages but even my mother, Near a reality affluent neighborhood in the middle of an urban area, had to wait over a week before power and gas were restored to her home. Literally hundreds of utility crews from both coasts were convoyed in emergently during the holiday season to repair lines but hundreds of thousands still had to wait near two weeks before every thing was repaired.
posted by midmarch snowman at 8:16 AM on December 2, 2015 [6 favorites]

As a Californian, I know all about this sorry of thing, because I read the Peanuts where Snoopy was trapped in his doghouse by a menacing icicle
posted by happyroach at 8:21 AM on December 2, 2015 [9 favorites]

That same winter, a similar problem faced the CN Tower in Toronto -- some 200 feet taller and in the core of a massive city. When the CBC says "high winds," well... the closed Gardiner expressway mentioned in the story is around 1000 feet south of the tower. High winds.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:21 AM on December 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

I know it's easy to call these people stupid - and I have, in the tags - but on further thought, if I was at the transmitter building under an overhanging roof and watching GIANT STABBY ICEBOLTS descend randomly from a third of a mile above, I'd probably stay there too. And I'd video it, and hoot and holler like a mad thing. So, slack cut.

The one chap who does hotfoot it out - perhaps even a co-worker with a car to move - doesn't have the appearance of a man at ease. Especially when the WRATH OF THE SNOWGODS impacts within sphincter-tightening distance.
posted by Devonian at 8:25 AM on December 2, 2015 [17 favorites]

Nature really seems to hate Oklahoma.
posted by gottabefunky at 8:31 AM on December 2, 2015 [10 favorites]

Ice is nice, and will suffice...
posted by Oyéah at 8:37 AM on December 2, 2015 [4 favorites]

It looks like they are under a roof or overhang, I think

There's hundreds of pounds of ice falling from something that's 150' taller than the Empire State Building. Unless that roof overhang is made out of reinforced concrete or steel plate it's not going to do much.
posted by nathan_teske at 9:04 AM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]

It's winter in 2007, and there's been an ice storm in Oklahoma. Some of that ice is now adhering to portions of the 1619-foot Sinclair Television Tower in Oklahoma City.

Well, that took a while.
posted by davebush at 9:07 AM on December 2, 2015 [9 favorites]

This was so.... satisfying. Yay smashy things.
posted by WidgetAlley at 9:13 AM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]

Oklahoma is no stranger to storm damage and power outages

It's the only state that I've lived in where I've seen car dealerships advertise Hail Damage Sales.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:14 AM on December 2, 2015

There's some statistic (or maybe it's an urban legend) that says that something like 75% of rattlesnake bites are suffered by men, are located on the hand or arm, and are associated with alcohol consumption.

I feel like there's probably a similar statistic regarding people killed by giant ice bombs.
posted by mudpuppie at 9:14 AM on December 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

We just had another ice storm in Oklahoma, although not as severe as 2007. Call me weird but it is oddly satisfying to rip sheets of ice over an inch thick off of your vehicle or every other frozen surface of your house. It is so thick that a car's defroster just creates a layer of water under the ice. It is different than having a little ice with snow on top that you thaw and use a scraper on. Its pretty sad what it does to the trees.

As far as watching with amusement the falling spears of ice, people stand outside and watch tornadoes and thunder storms roll in all the time around here. Not surprising to see a video of the winter version with someone yelling "oh shit" in the background.
posted by domino at 9:22 AM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]

There's hundreds of pounds of ice falling from something that's 150' taller than the Empire State Building. Unless that roof overhang is made out of reinforced concrete or steel plate it's not going to do much.

I just barely escaped being caught in a hailstorm (that featured fist-sized chunks of hail) by sheltering under the fugly concrete overhang of the monolithic concrete library building at the university I was attending. Thanks, brutalist architecture!
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:25 AM on December 2, 2015 [13 favorites]

I know metafilter really loves to hate stupid people, but it seems to me like this is being filmed from within some sort of recessed concrete/underground structure.
posted by erlking at 9:26 AM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]

It's the only state that I've lived in where I've seen car dealerships advertise Hail Damage Sales.

We have 'em in Texas, too. My wife's 2001 Volvo V40 was TOTALED by a hail storm (golf-ball size, but blowing in at a 45 degree angle in 60 MPH winds) and I mean totaled. 3 weeks after I made the last payment, thank you very much. Took out all the tail lights, the back window glass & a couple other pieces of glass on the windward side, as well as covering the thing with 1/2 inch deep dents. Everyone in the neighborhood had their roofs replaced after the storm & everyone that didn't have screens on their windows on the windward side also had all their glass in their houses smashed out. Our screens were all beat to shit, but the only windows we lost on the house were the 4 little windows on the overhead garage door. I found hailstones all the way at the far end of the garage when it was over.

In summary: Extreme weather can be extreme.
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:34 AM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]

In September 2012, the Port Mann Bridge opened between Surrey and Coquitlam, BC. That December, three weeks after opening fully for traffic in both directions, there was a big winter storm that came with serious ice build-up on the cables which then started to detach and fall on the 10 lanes of bridge traffic. It turns out the bridge was woefully underdesigned to deal with ice and panic ensued as solutions were rapidly proposed. There were also further issues with de-icing the deck itself.

Canadian engineers wear an Iron Ring as a reminder that the things they're designing and approving will have profound, long-lasting consequences in the real world, and they should think them through accordingly, so it's perhaps fitting that the solution installed a year later ended up being a load of chain-link rings that would be dropped one at a time to de-ice the cables.
posted by majuju at 9:39 AM on December 2, 2015 [15 favorites]

Step one: Open auto glass repair shop in hail-prone area.

Step two: Profit!
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:44 AM on December 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

I don't speak French, so the first time I walked around Quebec City, I was wondering what these signs meant.

"Chute of glaze? Is this, like, a donut shop or something? Cool!"
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:45 AM on December 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

Between ice sheets and glass falling from buildings in downtown TO over the years, I never walk above ground during windy or icy times. It's just not worth it. That's what our system of underground tunnels that are a combo anthill/shopping mall are for! (don't even get me started on how the Trump tower antenna almost fell down)
posted by SassHat at 10:06 AM on December 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

That 2007 ice storm left my family without power for over a week -- it obliterated the above-ground power grid in Tulsa, leaving only people with buried lines with power. It also contributed to the death of my grandmother. They tried hard to keep her warm in her cold house but eventually she had to be moved, and we think all that transit did her fragile self in.

So pictures like this are cool, but it's a reminder of that sadness.

(Also, it's so Oklahoma to film weather events and put them on YouTube. Oklahoma invented storm chasing.)
posted by dw at 10:30 AM on December 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

Nature really seems to hate Oklahoma.

I feel like the plains states are like the playground at recess and nature is the classroom full of preschoolers who have been sugared up and released.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:39 AM on December 2, 2015

This happened a couple of years ago at the New York Times building in New York City. Police had to close off the street for a while. Apparently an unintended consequence of the building's curtain walls. Pretty scary.
posted by monospace at 10:49 AM on December 2, 2015

Looks like they were in the building across the parking lot from the tower. You can see what the overhang is made of from the hole the ice makes in the video, although I'm not sure the actual roof would hold up much better.
posted by ckape at 10:52 AM on December 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

A coworker (I'm an employee of SBG in Utah) posted this on his facebook showing someone who decided to park underneath it. Not from 2007 but from this year. (non Facebook image link)
posted by msbutah at 11:28 AM on December 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

I really love the closing eh-h-hmm throat-clearing. Says so much.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 11:42 AM on December 2, 2015

Cool Papa Bell: "Chute of glaze? Is this, like, a donut shop or something? Cool!"

This is a little-known bit of Québécois history:

The "chute de glaze" is a heavily glazed donut that was a staple of the coureurs de bois. It is named for both its heavy glazing (this extra glazing served to provide needed extra calories on winter trapping expeditions) and the many portages the coureurs de bois would take around chutes - French for waterfalls.

A flavour that remains popular to this day is "crème d'Étienne Brûlé."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:30 PM on December 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

No way!
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 2:55 PM on December 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

I've always been amused by the signs you see on some buildings in Canada: 'Watch for falling ice/risque de chutes de glace'. Like, how do you watch for something like this, plummeting from the sky without warning? Seems like a pretty blasé warning for an unpredictable, capricious hazard causing instant death, or worse, but apparently the practice of relying on these signs to keep people alive has never been tested in court.
posted by Flashman at 3:23 PM on December 2, 2015

I remember this ice storm well. It was threatening us in Northwest Arkansas but stayed west of us at the end.

And then two years later we had our turn. I couldn't sleep until it stopped because all night long huge branches were snapping and it sounded like gunfire echoing down the valley where I live. Dozens of trees down just on my block and no power for 10 days and I live in town. Someone I know who lived in a really rural area was without power for closer to a month.

You get a little ice and you don't want to get out on the streets but you can somewhat enjoy it because you go look at the ice glaze on the trees and berries on holly bushes and think how pretty it is, and then you get a few inches of ice at one time and it's scary as fuck and you hope you never get an ice storm again in your lifetime. Nobody I know was hurt outside of some property damage but I am still bitter over how many plants/trees I lost and how awful the woods across NWA have looked since then. There are places where it looked like significant tornado damage.
posted by weretable and the undead chairs at 5:00 PM on December 2, 2015

So, do people wanna tell me again about how much better the rents are than in San Francisco?
posted by happyroach at 6:09 PM on December 2, 2015

@ Cool Papa Bell - no, complete bullshit on my part. I only wish!

I was inspired in the moment by this F.R. Scott poem: Bonne Entente.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:57 PM on December 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

OMG you totally had me. I almost told a friend about this thing I had just learned.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:39 PM on December 2, 2015

I'm so sorry. I should have prefaced that with something like "a fictional alternate history" or some such.

But.

You should still tell that friend the story and see how far you can take it. For additional credibility, you can say that the Château Clique opposed the "chute de glaze" as a foodstuff as part of their attempts to assimilate Lower Canada (the French part, now Québec) into Upper Canada (the British part). Also, in this alternate history Louis-Joseph Papineau would champion said food as a reaction to the Château Clique, cementing its place as a traditional food in Québec.

Moreover, you could assert the original glaze was made from maple syrup poured onto snow, still a time-honoured Québec tradition.

So this is technically not a derail because it involved maple syrup on ice/snow, even though it wasn't falling from the sky.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:00 PM on December 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

There weren't many safe places in the state to stand after that storm. We were stuck at home for most of the first day because a third of an enormous tree had fallen across the driveway and our chainsaw wasn't long enough to cut it. Trees were collapsing all day. Every few minutes, we would hear a loud crack and crash as the ice finished off a tree and then a loud shushing sound as all the ice that flew off of it came showering down. Sometimes the smaller trees just literally exploded. My kids and I camped out in the kitchen because it was the only part of the house that didn't have trees leaning over it. Terrifying.

We left Tulsa right after this. It was somewhat coincidental - a job offer came through while we were staying at the in-laws until our house was fixed and the power restored (eleven days). It influenced our decision somewhat though. It was much easier to decide to leave the home we loved when it was cold and dark and had chunks of it that had been ripped off by falling trees.

The weeks after the storm were surreal. Every hotel room that had power was full. Generators and chainsaws were being trucked in and sold out immediately. Electricians and tree trimmers had long waiting lists and were being flagged down in the streets. We played the "what state is that power company truck from" game when we drove around. For weeks (maybe months) afterward, some houses looked like fortresses because of the walls of tree debris stacked at the curb waiting for the city to haul it away. A large park was closed and turned into a dump for tree debris and it took over a year to mulch it all. Freezing rain and sleet are not uncommon in Oklahoma, but everyone who lived there knows which one "The Ice Storm" was.
posted by Dojie at 7:51 AM on December 4, 2015