Ice Storm Images 1

In last Wednesday's post, I mentioned that we were having a good old-fashioned ice storm. It was a doozy! (Not 1976 doozy, though!) I forgot how many times we lost power on Wednesday and Thursday, but the longest outage was the first one that lasted 8 or 9 hours on Wednesday night. Believe me, we were very thankful for the local utility crews who were working so long and hard for several days. This is how the maple tree outside the dining room window looked on Wednesday afternoon.

Here's the ice on one of our huge pine trees.

Even our exterior flood lights were coated.

This one looked like a tree of spun glass.

And I felt kind of sorry for this small pine. It was drooped over like an old man.

Most of our pines were so weighted down with ice that they resembled closed umbrellas. 

Mr. Cut Off and I did not sleep well on Wednesday night. Not only were we without power, but we kept hearing the sounds of tree limbs breaking and falling to the ground. It was pitch black - not a light in the sky. Was that huge pine near our bedroom window still going to be standing at daybreak? Thankfully, yes. It lost some limbs, but it continues to stand. How many trees would be down across our driveway? Thankfully, none. Lots of limbs, though.

Speaking of limbs. Mr. Cut Off had to clear all those from the driveway before we could go anywhere. Since Thursday was his birthday and we wanted to meet friends at our favorite restaurant to take advantage of his FREE birthday dinner, we ventured out. I was able to get some shots of our ice-covered world with more drooping trees along our route. The scenery was what I described as "hauntingly beautiful." The photos simply do not do it justice.

There were many spots where it was obvious that crews had been working to clean up fallen trees encroaching upon the roadway.

It continued to snow on top of the ice while we were in the restaurant making for a hazy trip on the way home.

These trees looked like they were bowing as we passed by. Maybe they were; I do share a birthday with Queen Elizabeth! 😉

There are 2 interesting things going on in the next photo. First, you can see ice on the antenna of the loaner vehicle we were driving. Our Traverse was in the body shop. That's a whole "nuther" story I'll save for another time. Secondly, we were meeting a utility truck. There were actually 2 utility trucks, as another one was following close behind this one. Mr. Cut Off joked that they were probably just leaving our road - that we had probably lost power again. Funny, but true! 

When we arrived home, the clock on the stove showed that power had just been restored 12 minutes earlier. It had been off again almost the entire time we were gone. Good night to go out to dinner, huh?

These last 2 shots are from the road we live on.

Can you spot the 2 fallen trees that the crews had cleared from the road in this last shot? (Hint: There's one on each side of the road.)

I'll be back tomorrow or Wednesday to share some beautiful shots taken on Friday and Saturday. Blue sky and ice melting also made for some cool video!

All is well in the Keweenaw.