In an ice storm, for those who haven't enjoyed the experience, rain from high-altitude clouds lands on surfaces that are well below freezing and immediately turns to ice. For those who suffer no damage, the scene is beautiful when the sun comes out and plays off the ice clinging to everything. But those whose power goes out don't appreciate the beauty. A twig the diameter of a pencil may well grow to the diameter of a broom handle because of the ice coating. The weight is often too much for the structure to stand.
Tree branches break, often falling on power lines already overburdened with their own ice load.
In the recent ice storm, the additional weight carried by the metal towers carrying the high-voltage transmission lines was enough to collapse them en masse. Well over a million people were without electrical power, and hundreds of thousands will spend weeks without power as the workmen brought in from as far away as Hawaii work in the bitter cold to rebuild the system. The storm is already responsible for about a dozen deaths, many of them from freezing at home in the dark. After all power has been restored, people will be grateful, but the gratitude will soon be replaced by hostility. If the old paradigm was to kill the messenger who brought bad news, the new one is to slay the bearer of useful commodities.