The Storm of '09

That's what it will go down as....the Storm of '09. People will speak of this for decades. It was one that tested us, took us to our ultimate last straws mentally, scared the fire right out of us, and made us revert to caveman tactics for survival.







I'm sitting in a warm house now, and it's quickly fading as to that one week we lost. The above photo is of my 10 yr old tree. We've watched it grow from newly planted to the majesty that it is now. My only tree in the back yard, much valued for the shade it provides us in the brutal summers.




On day two...it started to droop....the sheer weight of the ice pulling it down. That same ice was working on the power lines.

On day 3...it snapped in 3-4 different places...I nearly snapped with it




I had worked Monday and Tuesday...but left early on that day. We had plenty of warning, and we're well stocked on "snow day" comfort foods...but oh man...if I could go back again, I would have done it all different.

This storm was different than any i had ever experienced in my 20 years down here. It started by raining little hail. It rained these little ticky tacky sounding hail balls...no bigger than bb's....and it rained them for 24 hours straight.

They covered everything like rain, and then joined together, like some horror movie objects coming to life, to coat my entire world in clear, slick, wrap-around ice. Then it started to snow, and iced the slick beauty in about 3 inches of white blanket...

THEN WE LOST POWER!!!...something that has never happened before...we were iced in, too far and dangerous to try to get to town...and we were without power. I have an all electric house.

The irony of the fact that I moved my parents down here with us, to enjoy a temperate winter did not escape any of us. Larry's antenna's for the ham radio came down...the verticals...the beams...all of them. The dollars to replace that mess are still being tallied:








We were without power for 4 days...food supplies drained, emotions raw...and when the thaw finally came it came in the form of a 55 degree day...it only made things more dangerous. The missiles of icicles that were firing down at us made it impossible to get to the vehicles...the thought of 4 inches of a solid sheet of ice on my roof, just waiting to dislodge makes us run out of the house a safe distance even now.

At the top of this pic, you can see where baby tree had split at the top.

We had a small generator, that provided space heaters to keep the chill off, but we did not use it at night. SO COLD! We had a little tv, and the laptop powered to run molly's dvds...and we had coffee or the microwave alternating...but microwave food was NOT what i had purchased!

We ended up moving the propane grill into the house, and blowing the tank on one night of warm. We got the house all the way up to 60 degrees.


Out the front door...it looked magnificent...I can only start to enjoy the beauty now that power has been restored. There are still thousands of homes without...especially our neighbors to the south in Arkansas...They caught the brunt of it...we were but on the fringe of that storm.






Little Bill and Ang made it home, and made everything better. We lost power
again for the entire day Saturday while they were home, but it was back on at the end of the day...It still blinks, and my breath stops for the duration of time until it kicks back on.



Bill made everything better...all it took was some laughs, a snowball fight, and some sledding....and all was well again.





Today I will go replenish the pantry, and then come home and shop for a whole house generator that runs on a tank of propane. We may never have the opportunity to use it again....but...just in case