The Ice Storm of January 1999 was a severe ice storm that struck the Washington D.C. metropolitan area on January 14 and 15, 1999. Heavy ice accumulation bringing down power lines resulted in around 745,000 people in the area losing power. Many of the major power companies supplying DC, Maryland, and Virginia had significant portions of their customer bases impacted. At the height of the storm, around one third of PEPCO's customers were without power, with some waiting up to two weeks for power to be restored.
Famous quotes containing the words ice and/or storm:
“People in Stamps used to say that the whites in our town were so prejudiced that a Negro couldn’t buy vanilla ice cream. Except on July Fourth. Other days he had to be satisfied with chocolate.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“In the very midst of the crowd about this wreck, there were men with carts busily collecting the seaweed which the storm had cast up, and conveying it beyond the reach of the tide, though they were often obliged to separate fragments of clothing from it, and they might at any moment have found a human body under it. Drown who might, they did not forget that this weed was a valuable manure. This shipwreck had not produced a visible vibration in the fabric of society.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)