Disaster Zone

Monday the predicted ice storm moved in. The direst predictions came true. Freezing rain, ice, snow, more freezing rain. By Tuesday morning we had a beautiful world. Ice covered everything and shimmered in the daylight. But it kept raining.

A little before 9am on Tuesday, our power went off. As the rain fell, it froze as it touched the trees and the ground-- over 2 inches of rain... which meant over 2 inches of ice. We had some trouble with our generator-- overloaded it and it threw the reset button. But we didn't know that. All we knew was that we couldn't get power in some of our outlites, the lights wouldn't work some places. Of course it wouldn't power the heat at all.

So when night fell, we used candles and used the wood burning stove. Even with the blower motor off, it gave out some heat. Afternoon and into the night the trees became encased in ice. The bent. They snapped. By evening, it sounded like gun shots going off, followed by a crash as another branch shattered to the ground. Lightening flared periodically. But it wasn't lightening, it was transformers, or power lines snaking down and flashing great blue light up to reflect against the clouds.

We read by candle light around the kitchen table and went to bed. Snap! Crash! all night long. It seemed like there couldn't be a tree left standing! When we awoke on Wednesday morning, we saw a changed landscape. No tree was left unscathed. Branches bent to the ground under loads of snow and ice. Huge limbs broke and lay piled beneath trees. When we did an afternoon walk... and still branches were snapping... about 10 huge trees had been uprooted and lay sprawled across the pasture, or had cracked other trees as they fell in the woods.

I need to turn off the computer now. We only run the generator a few hours a day. Will write more later and send photos.