Ice Storm '09

Beautiful... yes. A pain in the neck and rather dangerous... even more so. These are the trees in front of my house in the early hours of the storm on Tuesday. All pretty and laced with ice. Later that night, though, all that ice compiled and that tree is now missing it's top half. This picture is from the next morning.

All night Tuesday, we listened to freezing rain, trees cracking, limbs falling, and transformers blowing. Our yard (and everyone else's) looks like it is covered in shards of glass. We were out of power from Tuesday night until Friday afternoon. Thankfully, we had hot water and a little gas log in the fireplace that we were able to huddle around and cook over. Nothing like camping in the living room! We took in my father-in-law whose house had no heat source at all and we all got some good quality time together.... just enough that we didn't kill each other. 

Anyway, I am really thankful for all the utility workers who got us up and running in what was really pretty quick considering that the entire city (the entire northern part of the state, actually) was out of electricity.  It is so good to be warm and back to normal!