I Was Feeling So Powerless

As it turns out, I was.

ICE STORM 2008

We had an 18-hour power outage here from Friday at 3 a.m. until 9 p.m. It was the result of an ice storm that brought .5" of freezing rain that had power, phone, and cable television lines down throughout the area. There were an estimated 217,000 of our closest friends and neighbors in the same predicament.

Our power was restored Friday but our 3-in-1 television/phone/Internet wasn’t restored until this morning...two whole days! No wonder the people in Iraq and Afghanistan are so ornery. I was ready to kill someone after about six hours!

It seems somewhat prescient, then, that I had queued up the Friday and Saturday items to post automatically.

The last time we had a storm like this was way back in 1987 when we lost the two maple trees in our front yard. The ice clings to the tree branches which cause huge limbs to splinter from the trees. These limbs fall onto power lines which snap and put people out of utilities. It is a weird sensation, being outside and listening to all the creaking, snapping, and collapsing.

Here is a view of the field (you've seen other pics of this area when I post about the deer) on Friday morning. A large limb is down at center.


A close up of the lilac shows the amount of ice.


Here's the birch tree in the backyard straining under the weight of the storm. I had already cleaned up a lot of the branches that had fallen. You can see the grass covered with ice.


The rain turned to snow mid-morning on Friday. Here's the birch on Saturday under blue skies. Even though it was sunny, there was no relief as the temperature was 20˚F. (Reminder to my international friends: 32˚F is the freezing point.) You can't see it here, but there are two large limbs on the top that have snapped and are hanging down. Someone is going to have to climb up there and cut them off in the spring. I'll have to manipulate my brother into doing it!


It's supposed to get up to 40˚F today so all this should be melted and the trees will feel relief.

Update: The temperature barely got over 32˚F today despite the prediction of 40˚ weather. The ice has barely melted today and you can hear chain saws buzzing in the distance as people begin the clean up. They had predicted 50˚F for tomorrow...so maybe it will get up to 40˚F which will finally put things right.