2156 Ice

Friday, December 12, 2008

We had an ice storm last night. All evening the electricity had been bouncing, so I gave up and went to bed at 11:30 pm. At about 11:45 the electricity gave up for good. All night long I could hear trees and branches falling. Thuds, bangs, crashes.

Usually when there's a winter storm predicted, I move my car to the bottom of the driveway to be sure I can get out. Last night I didn't. I didn't feel like walking back up the drive (350 feet) in icy rain.

It's a good thing I didn't. This photo shows precisely where I would have parked. Those trees don't look big, but they're black locust - very heavy wood.


The next one is the little apple tree next to the garage. It's been uprooted. It did hit the garage, but as far as I can see there was no damage - maybe a dent in the rain gutter at most. Poor little apple.


This is the side yard that I'd just got cleared and leveled and seeded this year. I've been rather proud of how nice it looked. Now it's covered in half-trees and large branches. Note the two trees leaning in the background. They'll go over with the next wind.


The back yard. That's a huge tree that uprooted. Several behind it will topple with the next wind.

There's lots more. I've got about ten trees completely down, and probably six or eight more that broke somewhere in the middle and will have to be taken down.

The village got electricity this afternoon (it's a bit intermittent, but the "on" periods are getting longer), but my street (a few miles out of the village) may not get it back for a while. We had a lot of trees down on lines. The crews opened the street to traffic this morning, cleared it of fallen trees, but that was all they did. There's one very tall tree leaning at an angle across the street, uprooted and resting the top branches on the electric wires. I've gone under it five times so far today, and it has scared me every time.

At least two of my trees and one large branch had fallen into the road. The road crews cut them up and then pushed the debris onto my yard. It's all a mess. I cleared a path to the mailbox so I could get delivery, but the rest will have to wait.

Everyone on my street was pretty lucky. A huge 3' diameter tree fell in the yard across the street, and just missed both the house and the vehicles. Down the street a bit, one of those 150-year-old monsters went down - the root ball is half their yard - and again it missed the house and vehicles.

I'm sitting in Piper's office typing this. My cell phone, camera, and laptop all had low batteries, so he gave me a key so I could come in, charge batteries, and use the bathroom. I figure when I leave here and go home, I'll just crawl into bed. No light, no heat, no water. Bah.
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