The BAD Storm!!

I wrote this blog on Thursday, the first day of our power outage and the day most of the carnage took place in the yard. Since I wrote it things have begun to improve, mostly notably, my mood. We have things happening, I got a shower and washed my hair. The ice has melted and some of the trees mentioned in this blog have shown some promise. 

But not THE tree.

This has been our “interesting” winter weather week, we usually have one every year, maybe more but usually at least one. We’ve had a drier than normal winter thus far. December was cold, highs barely reaching 40. Then January hit and was pretty nice, mild, temperature-wise. Last weekend we finally had a chance of snow. Some areas got a few inches of snow. We finally started getting flurries Sunday. Monday started the scare, some snow on and off all day. Tuesday snowed more regularly all day and some accumulation started, about an inch if I recall. Yesterday, Wednesday, started with snow early on and we finally had about 6”, but it was raining teeny, mist-like drops most of the day so it wasn’t fun to play in. Then this morning I woke and saw that the power was out. I threw open the curtains on my French doors in my bedrooms like I always do and saw this:





This tree WAS the centerpiece of my back yard. I knew it was vulnerable because it grew in the shade and was somewhat spindly for a 20 year old 25-30 foot tall tree. But I never saw a tree fall apart so thoroughly. I’ll be replacing it with another maple of the same type, “Autumn Flame”. It’s a beautiful medium-shade tree that turns screaming red in the fall. I miss it already. I even cried.

This is one of, if not THE worst ice storm we’ve had since I moved to Washington back in 1985. We had storms in the past that coated our trees with ice and broke the tops off trees, mine included. Topping trees is not always a bad thing, though. THIS storm is doing way more damage, it’s taking the trees completely down, piece by piece. It’s noon, still raining and still freezing outside, so the ice is still forming and pulling more trees, branches, bushes, everything down. A branch high up in a tree breaks off and as it falls takes all the lower branches with it, the wood is all very brittle and has no resistance, every needle and twig has nearly an inch of ice and weighs a ton.

Besides my maple I lost the redbud also in the back yard most likely. It has a split trunk that is now twisted open since the limbs all splayed out. My large, old lilac is getting thinned, many of its “trunks” are broken. A mugho pine that I’d planted near the mailboxes and should have been removed is now gone. My birch out front got topped, as well as the funny, struggling pine right in front of the boys’ bedrooms. I’ve referred to that as my Bonsai tree. Full size bonsai. It got topped as well, we’ll have to see if it will remain, it might actually look better now! I have an old alder out back with a tire swing hanging from it. It lost all the limbs on one side and just a few minutes ago a fir fell and took off the top and some limbs on the other side. It might survive but it may be pretty dang ugly! We’ll have to see. The fir by the road has only dropped a couple limbs, one RIGHT on Keith’s car, as far as we can tell there was no damage. Seriously, these limbs are HEAVY! It could have damaged his car!

As I sit here I continue to hear cracking trees and falling limbs. It’s still raining and still freezing. This must be the monsoon that hit my folks on Kauai and dumped so much rain. It’s not that we have a lot of precip, it’s that it’s so warm it isn’t freezing on the way down. It’s only freezing as it lies on what it’s landed on, hence the ice-covered everything!

It can stop now! Please?!?!?