My Favorite Things

My Favorite Things

December 13, 2008

Ice Storm

Thursday night around 10:25pm our electricity went out as the freezing rainstorm got heavy. We lit candles and settled in to wait it out. Sometime around 2:30 - 3:00AM the trees in front of our neighbors house lost branches just in front of and behind our car, missing it by inches. Someone was trying to drive down the street and he an my husband pushed the branches aside. We moved the car to my workplace at the end of the street. We spent the remaining hours until daylight listening to the awful sounds of breaking trees and falling branches.


Will heads to the end of the street to get the car and find someplace open with hot food and drinks. We were still without power and the temperature inside the house had dropped to 56 degrees. Our car had been parked directly behind the large branches he is walking past. Radio reports said 100,000 in our area alone were without power.


Large ice covered branches fell in the back yard and hung on the dog walk line.



The side yard was full of fallen branches. You can just make out the police blocking access to the southern part of the street where trees fell and broke all the windows out of one house. Power and phone lines were broken and laying in the street as well.


The neighbor's tool shed still stands but a large branch covers the door. An entire tree is laying behind the shed and barely missed crushing it.


While Will was out getting food a large tractor trailer truck drove down the street and knocked more branches into the street. Neighbors came out and moved them with their hands and a truck equipped with a snow plow.



What a difference it made when the sun came out. Ice melted and was falling like hail. This is the same view with and without ice.

Will had to work on Friday and Mike and I stayed at the house layered in clothes waiting for the power to come back on. Rain continued to fall and the basement started to flood. Radio reports estimated no power until Monday and urged people to go to shelters if they got too cold. We didn't want to leave our animals and we were also afraid our house would be broken into so we decided to stick it out as long as we could. By afternoon we had phone service which was good because the batteries on our cell phones were running low. I sat by our big front window and stitched until we lost the light. We saw power company and city trucks driving up and down our street which made us feel like they were trying to do something. It was frustrating because the houses to the south of us and the factory across the street still had power but we did not. The temperature dropped to about 50 degrees in the house and we put out blankets for the animals to hide under. Will had made arrangements for us to come to his work once his shift was over at 10pm to eat and get warm for a while. Around 9:30 we were surprised and happy when the power came back on. We had to use space heaters until the water cleared from the basement but at least we had something to warm the house back up.

This morning we went out to get groceries and saw more damage. The store we shop at was still out of power and running on generators so we had to go someplace else for perishables. We have been busy today trying to clear up some of the branches and take care of things we couldn't do yesterday so I don't know how many are left without power but I am afraid it is a lot.

3 comments:

Melody said...

Ice storms are so bad. We just had one here earlier this week, and we lost our power for one day. Not nearly as long or with as much damage as you have experienced.

I stayed home as well, even tho the house got cold. I didn't want to leave our cats and dog either.

I would rather have snow any day than ice storms.

Glad you have your power back on and things are returning to normal

Barb said...

Good pictures of the ice storm. So beautiful but so dangerous. My husband is from NH and I know his mom's nursing home lost power but used a generator. We've had ice storms in Ohio in the past few years and they really wreak havoc but we have been fortunate to only go a day without power while others around us have gone for a week or so! Glad you are in good shape...

Brenda Lou said...

So glad your heat came back on. Those ice storms are so dangerous and scary.