Yesterday morning as I navigated the fifteen minute drive to work, the temperature was 37 degrees and it was raining. By 9:30 am the temperature had dropped five degrees and the rain had not abated. By 10:00 am there was a thin coat of ice on everything. An informal parking lot survey indicated people were starting to leave the office.
The cafeteria in the basement of the building was packed at lunch; very few of us were willing to hit the roads. By 4:00 pm about 80% of the parking lot was empty. My normal 20 minute return trip in the evening had turned into a 150 minute white-knuckled ordeal. I made it home safely but really stressed out.
Knowing that the weather was going to be dicey, the dog got to stay in the house. At 5:30 pm he was more than ready to get out and ‘find his spot’. He barely made it of the front porch before he looked up and darted back to its shelter. Upon an exhortation from me to, “find your spot!” he tiptoed into the azalea planter at the edge of the porch and did his duty. No romp in the yard for him.
No trip to the gym for me. Unnecessary trips are out of the question. Most of the people who bugged out at the office stopped at the grocery store on the way home and purchased: every loaf of bread and package of crackers in sight, every single package of hamburger, every can of tomatoes or tomato sauce on the shelf, all the kidney beans, all the milk, and most of the Little Debbie snack cakes. Chili and Little Debbies is the ice storm meal of choice around here. Lots of batteries get sold as well.
I made a trip out to the deck to fill the bird feeders. They had completely drained two of the tube feeders and had made a real dent in the third. It was a little difficult getting the feeders unclipped from their hangers. The clips were full of and covered in ice. A few well aimed whacks with a piece of aluminum pipe removed the ice and loosened the clips enough to open them up. I filled the feeders with black-oil sunflower seeds, beat the ice off the perches, and clipped them back into place. I also removed the ice from the tray I put water in and refilled it. I’m sure it refroze quickly, but I also know that a few of the birds got a drink beforehand.
I love standing on my deck and listening during these winter weather events. The sounds are oddly amplified and muffled at the same time. Many of the normal sounds are almost gone. The constant dull roar of the interstate is almost completely mute. It’s 4,500 feet away and its sound only diminishes when all but the most raging fools amongst us try to keep moving. The birds are silent; they’ve all found a place to hunker down under some form of shelter. I’ve seen a dozen titmice and juncos clutching fast to the edge of the siding trim up under the eave on my front porch. If I didn’t mind the bird poop so much, I’d build them a decent perch or two in sheltered spots. Maybe that’s something I should put my mind to: poop friendly bird perches.
As the layer of ice builds, I hear new sounds. Tree branches in the woods behind the house begin breaking. Some of them sound like rifle shots followed by a tinkling shower of ice falling through other branches and the crash of the broken limb as it careens to the ground. I’ve seen Bradford pear trees after these storms that are nothing more than a short, stubby trunk rising three or four feet from the ground with all of their limbs arrayed on the ground around them. Magnolia trees are particularly susceptible to this damage. Their broad leaves collect a massive amount of weight as the ice builds on them. The long, thin needles of pine trees quickly become too heavy for their limbs to hold them up. Some falling limbs crash onto power lines as they fall, darkening whole neighborhoods in their descent. I hear power transformers explode and portable generators power up.
Before going to bed, I set my cell phone’s alarm to wake me up in case my power went out. I put an old heavy cotton sleeping bag next to the bed in case the electric fan on my gas heater became incapacitated during the night: no electricity – no fan, no fan – no flame, no flame – no heat, no heat – brrrr. I made sure my flashlight had good batteries and placed it on the nightstand next to my bed where it would be easy to find with groping fingertips.
I woke up several times during the night. I could hear the drizzling rain. I know my gutters are getting extremely heavy. I had a little trouble getting back to sleep each time over fretting about the house. A few years ago I had fourteen or fifteen large trees cut out of the yard. Last night I didn’t have to worry about their limbs falling and taking my power line or my deck or my truck or anything else with them on their gravity driven race to the ground. I didn’t have all the trees cut; there are still several that could cause bad problems.
Suddenly, NPR wakes me up with news about senate controversies in Illinois and Minnesota. The power had not gone out during the night! It’s still drizzling. Get out of bed, into the shower, and into my clothes. A quick window survey shows a few small limbs in the yard but no damage to any of the good stuff.
I know that if the roads are bad, I need to leave early for work. This is something I seem to be the only one around here to have realized over the years. If I leave early there is less traffic to deal with; 99% of the people I normally share the roads with do not know this and will walk out of their doors at their normal times and drive like they normally do when the weather is good. Their driving skills are poor enough when conditions are ideal. Put a little ice on the roads and it’s sheer pandemonium! This morning’s commute is only forty minutes.
I noticed many large limbs in yards, on cars, on houses, and in the road on my way in. I see a few power lines lying on the ground underneath ice covered limbs. A couple of the neighborhoods look eerily dark as I drive past. I drive past four or five emergency vehicles parked close to one another. The reflections of their flashing lights hit the ice on the trees and the world is turned into a spectacular vision of red and blue and yellow sparkles. I hope no one’s hurt. People sometimes do very foolish things in the dark of a power outage to keep themselves warm.
I am at the office warmly making coffee when most of the idiots are warming up their vehicles in preparation for what they are glibly thinking will be their normal commute. I wish I had money invested in a wrecker service. Our power is coming from the huge diesel generators installed shortly after the twin ice storms of late 2000.
The parking lot is bare. People with kids whose schools are closed are staying home. People scared of driving in these conditions are wisely hunkered down at home fixing chili and eyeing packages of Little Debbie snack cakes. A few poor idiots are walking home after realizing they won’t be able to get their vehicles out of the ditches they’ve slid into. A few other poor souls are waiting for backlogged wreckers to come get them.
It’s 10:10 am and it’s still drizzling. The temperature is 34 degrees. They’re predicting a high today of 43 degrees. Fresh, cold rain will freeze to existing ice until it reaches 36 or 37 degrees. We’re not out of the woods yet, but things are looking better.
