The weekend’s ice storm had coated trees and power lines, collapsing both all across Oklahoma. At one point, more than 600,000 customers statewide were without power.

Including The Norman Transcript.

Monday’s paper, printed around 11:30 p.m. Sunday, was already on the streets with the first stories of the weekend’s ice storm. Those stories were filed by staff members scattered across the county to get information about the storm.

So Monday was a wrap, but Tuesday’s paper was just beginning.

Classified and display ads were still being sold; stories were being developed and photographs taken. No pages had been built.

And while a select few stories and photos were complete, the bulk of Tuesday’s Transcript wasn’t even written yet.

Then the lights went out.

At first, publisher David Stringer wasn’t too concerned. He figured the electricity would be out for a while, then come back on.

By early afternoon, Stringer had gone to Plan B.

“We were waiting for a while to see if it was a temporary or a long-term thing,” Stringer said. “We really didn’t do much for two or three hours. But by about 1 p.m., we had decided we better make alternative plans to get the paper published somewhere else.”

Normally, The Transcript’s 14,000-run is printed on the company’s 8-unit Goss Urbanite offset press. The paper also prints the University of Oklahoma’s Oklahoma Daily newspaper, and other newspapers in Moore, Chickasha and Midwest City.

On any given day, those papers, along with a few others, are all printed on the hulking metal monster which occupies The Transcript’s basement.

But with the power off in most of Cleveland County — and a good portion of the Oklahoma City metropolitan area — the Goss Urbanite sat silent.

So Stringer began searching for an alternative printing site.

His original backup plan, to print in Shawnee, at the Shawnee News-Star, fell through because Shawnee was dealing with its own storm-caused electrical problems.