Scribbles by ME

The Ice Storm from Hell Part 3

Wednesday dawned as an intensely brilliant, spectacular day. Looking outside was amazing. The sun glistened through the ice on the trees and sparkled like millions of diamonds. Yet, the ice was very thick around every leaf, tree branch, blade of grass, and anything else in the elements. The electric lines had so many rotund icicles on them that my husband had to duck to walk under them. How could something so beautiful be causing such hardships on so many?  I know the word wonderland is trite, but no other word came to mind.

After breakfast I ventured out with my camera to explore. The occasion called for another round of bloating clothes, but I was soon out the door. There must have been a good two inches of ice on the porch steps. Fortunately, we have banisters on both sides. Stepping around the yard was a strange experience. There appeared to be three layers of ice on the ground. Each seemed to be frozen unto itself and the layers did not seem connected to each other. The top layer that I referred to as snow wasn't snow, I don't think. I'm not sure what it was but it looked like trillions of very tiny, round opaque white dots. I have only seen snow flakes, not snow dots. I would guess it could have been sleet, but sleet is clear.

As I stepped upon the ground, I seemed to go through the middle layer of ice and then drop down to the third layer which would hold, but was slick. I discovered the big noise I had heard in the night was a twelve foot limb from a huge oak tree that snapped and fell within two feet of the back of the house. The circumference of the limb was ten inches. The limb also fell right beside the guineas' roost. I bet they had the living daylights scared out of them. Yes, they roosted every night in the same unprotected area through all the weather. At daylight they marched to their coop/house which is very nice. I swear I don't know who's dumber, the birds or the dogs.

Being inquisitive creatures and "guard dogs", the guineas came out to see what I was doing. Some had ice frozen to their backs just off center enough to make walking really difficult. They kept falling over on the side of the ice and "buckwheating" their little hearts out. Female guineas have a very distinctive chirp which sounds as if they are saying "buckwheat, buckwheat, buckwheat". The males have a nerve-wracking, strident "chee chee chee" call.

This was not the only tree branch down. We had probably thirty or more that were war casualties. Our poor peach trees had so much ice on them they were half-way to being uprooted. We have two orchards. One has forty-eight peach trees and an older one has peach, pear, cherry, plum, and nectarine trees. They were all ailing. The pear trees seem to be the least besieged.  That is probably because their limbs grow almost straight up instead of out.  The hardest hit and the ones that broke the most were cedar trees. As I made my walk around the house, I discovered that walking anywhere near the trees was not a good idea. They were still creaking, swaying,  breaking, and falling dangerously to the ground.

I walked out to road in front of the house, so I could see up and down the road for about half mile to the east and the west.  I don't have the words to describe what my first impression was.  My mouth just dropped and stayed open as I marveled at what I saw.  So many trees had fallen across the road both to the left and right, we could not have motored out if we had wanted to do so. It looked like a huge bomb had gone off. Two years ago we had two tornados go through our area and I believe the downed trees and telephone poles from this Ice Hell far surpassed the damage sustained in the tornados paths. The home damages were not nearly as bad, but the ice pelted down everywhere, not just in swaths as a tornado does.

Many trees had been uprooted and now lay willy-nilly across the road.  Some trees just had broken off limbs, but many trees and limbs were still bent so badly and  the possibility that these actions were still on going made getting out with a chain saw a silly folly on Wednesday.

Four years ago a student I had been close to and who had been on my newspaper staff gave me a baby magnolia tree that I highly prized and aptly named, "The Britany Tree".  I e-mailed Britany pictures of its growth each year.  Now the tree was in dire straights. I removed the broken branches and then as gently as possible tried to remove the ice from the leaves and limbs. I did a fair enough job to keep it from losing any more limbs, but it still looked pretty sad and droopy.  I lost the top three feet of the tree along with about five branches.  Only time will tell me what the poor baby will look like in the spring.  Hope the Britney's Tree's yearly picture doesn't look too badly.

I returned to the house very disheartened. My clothes and boots were soaked and I had to put on a whole new array of lovely fashions.  The rest of the daylight hours I spent reading on the front couch by the window. I had five blankets on me and was pretty comfortable.  Having to shovel myself out for a trip to the bathroom was the difficult job.

Once the kerosene heater had taken the chill off our "adopted" living quarters, the kerosene heater was turned off during the day.  We stoked 'er back up about 5:00 p.m. or when the temperature reached 60 degrees.  We began turning it completely off at night when we retired to ice castle bedroom with the cozy cocoons.

Day three of our internment ends.