The Ice Storm!

On December 11, 2007, we had a major storm come through the midwest. They say it's the worst storm for over 20 years. It wasn't snow though. It was ICE!! Across the midwest there were major power outages and damage done by the ice storm. There was quite a bit of damage done in our area, but there was even greater damage done elsewhere, so we felt pretty lucky when it was all over. Our power was out for 12 hours the day of the storm. In some of the outlying areas around us, the power was out for over 2 weeks. Several families in our branch of the church were without power for about a week. Luckily people got by with their wood-burning stoves.
Most of the damage of the storm was done to power lines and trees. The ice coating the trees made the branches hang clear to the ground on some of them and they simply snapped off. If you went outside that day you could hear popping branches all over town. It was kind of spooky because that was really the only sound outside. Hardly anyone was stirring from home that day.
I was home with the boys that day, but Jared was at work. By about 3 in the afternoon, the power had been off for about 6 hours by then and we were cold, so we drove up to the hospital to visit and get warm. That night when Jared got home, we cooked dinner over the Coleman stove in the garage and ate by candlelight. Grant thought it was a birthday party because that's the only time he sees candles.
We have two huge sycamore trees right outside the bedroom windows on the main floor of the house, and we lost a lot of branches from them. So that night, we decided to all sleep in the basement guest room to conserve our body heat and be a little safer, just in case (lots of people had branches that snapped off trees come right through their roofs or windows). So since it was dark and we had no power, we all went to bed at 8:30pm that night. Grant was in the playpen with a sleeping bag draped over the top to keep any heat he had in with him. He was wearing his footy pajamas and a sweater and had about 3 or 4 quilts too. I wore my pajamas, a flannel shirt, a sweatshirt, sweats, thick socks and mittens. Jared had some long underwear that he uses for hunting and snowboarding, socks, a sweatshirt, and fleece pants. Plus, we had about 3 quilts piled up on our bed too. About an hour after we went to bed, the phone rang and it was Jared's mom calling to ask if our power was back on yet. Just as she said that, the power came on. Kind of spooky huh? Anyway, we found out later that our house was down to about 50-55 degrees or so. Pretty cold when you're used to 70. We still slept in the basement, but we were able to shed a few clothes and quilts pretty soon. Here are some of the pictures I took of the trees around our house and around town.
This is our Azalea bush out in front. It showed the ice coating all the way around the branches pretty good. Later on, once it started to thaw, you could break off a branch and slide the branch out of the ice, leaving an ice straw.This is a picture of the branches of one of our trees. It shows the icicles hanging from the branches. It was really pretty in the sunlight the next day.This is one of our maple trees. From across the yard, it just looked like a really heavy frost.We'd been enjoying some nice sunshiny days prior to the storm, so we still had green grass and green leaves on some of the trees. This shot shows the green leaves encased in ice.Most of our back and lower yard are bordered by cedar trees. Many of them broke off and nearly all were bent over and looked like rainbows. Here's a close up shot of the ice on them.And here's what they looked like in our yard. This is only a small number of them. See the orange leaves on the branches to the right? Normally they hang up above the roof of our house and they were almost touching the ground from the weight of the ice. See how they're in the wires here too? A transformer blew right here in the middle of the night (while I was watching out the window). Scary! Anyway, the city had to come down and cut our branches from these trees so they could fix the problem. They made a huge mess and driving their 'cherry picker' down into our yard left some monster tracks in our newly seeded grass. Grrrrrrrrr!!!

This is a picture of our yard and the neighbors' yard to the right. It shows some of the broken branches and how loaded the trees are that are hanging down. The amazing thing was that when the ice started melting off the trees, they sprung back up to their original shape.Well, not all of them. Here are some pictures of some of the damage done around town. These used to be nice full trees lining the block where the Catholic church is. They look pretty sad now. This is the yard of one of our neighbors just around the corner.This is the same street. There was literally not one house in town that didn't have at least one tree down or branches broken off. Debris was in the streets, and everywhere.This house is just up by our mailbox. They lost half their tree and it was a big one.This is how a lot of the trees in town look now. With the tops broken off and everything, they all look pretty sad. We were pretty well set for food and everything when the storm hit, but I did happen to go to the store a couple days later and there was no bread AT ALL. The delivery truck had been delayed. I went to Walmart in Manhattan a week after the storm and they didn't have any 'C' or 'D' batteries and there were absolutely NO flashlights or candles at all! A guy behind me in the checkout said he lived in one of the rural areas that was still without power a week later and they had been told not to expect it back on for them until Christmas or later. He was buying some oatmeal creme cookies and toilet paper. What a trooper!!