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Anyone who has ever watched the discovery channel for an extended period of time can tell you that if there’s one thing a gator is ill prepared to handle, it’s an ice storm. Due to the recent arctic cold fronts arrival here in Houston the HG staff got to experience first hand what a Texas ice storm is all about.

Leading up to the storm the mood around southeast Texas was very lively at the prospect of ultra-rare snowfall. Kids & parents alike were giddy with the notion of baking sheet sled rides, snow angels and of course the always highly anticipated snowball warfare. Unfortunately, that’s not what the residents of Houston received.

Instead, Houston got a nice healthy dose of Black Ice (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_ice). Anyone who has ever driven on or around a Houston freeway can tell you that the fearless army of amateur demolition derby drivers that regularly patrol the cities roads need no help in creating a hazardous mess on a daily basis. The heavy coat of ice on all the overpasses and onramps that morning greatly increased their effectiveness.

Here’s a view of Houston’s transtar traffic map from 2/4/11. The red exclamation mark diamonds indicate either hazardous ice or wrecks:

Needless to say the management here at HostGator were shaking in our boots at the prospect of our entire Houston support staff being quarantined to their neighborhoods by ice slicked roads. Fortuntely the Houston gators sheer determination along with fairer weather conditions at our Austin location allowed us to keep our support volumes manageable.

However, not all of our gators were so lucky on their way in.

While giving a special on site traffic report to a local drive time radio show he himself became a victim of Houston’s icy wrath. Here’s an audio recording of the call which actually captured the crash live on the air:

William calls the Joe Pags Show

Here’s a couple shots of his truck after the incident:

Don’t worry, our gator wasn’t injured. While traversing a dangerously icy overpass his truck lost control and spun ninety degrees slamming into a guard rail. It then spun the opposite direction and slammed into a second guard rail. We couldn’t include the audio from the second collision due to some rather colorful exclamations.

Mother nature can be a fickle mistress, this is something we at HG know all too well. It just goes to show that our gators will brave any obstacle to ensure that your support requests are handled in a timely manner.

Next time though we’ll stay off our cell phones :)