Ice Storm

Yesterday it started snowing again, then raining and sleeting.  Through the night it did all three.   I left the hospital about 9am following an inservice after work, and got home about 9:30.  This is what I saw:

Beautiful, but dangerous. 

Less than 2 hours later, look at the view:

That's the Bradford Pear you saw behind the crepe myrtle in the first picture.  I saw my neighbors backing into my drive and then go back towards their house again, but figured they just couldn't make it up the hill, like during the first snowstorm.  Later, I saw them parked outside my house, and when I looked more closely, saw the Bradford Pear split down the middle, and half of it lying across the road. 

One had brought a chain saw, so he cut off some of the branches and we hauled them into the empty lot.  Then he tied a huge rope to the largest section of the tree and tried to pull it down the road a bit to the empty lot.  We had to chop off some more branches to actually get it all out of the road.  Farther up the yard, another huge limb of another Bradford Pear was down.  There are 11 of them lining my corner lot yard.

Once the limbs were out of the way, the couple drove off, while my mower man went to turn his truck around.  All around the neighborhood we could hear the cracking and popping of limbs breaking.  I walked up the street a bit to pull the other fallen limb off the edge of the road.  When I turned around, the other half of the first tree had toppled, this time towards the center of the yard, but fortunately, far enough from the house not to inflict any damage.

My neighbor drove his truck slowly back up the street and stopped to gaze at the tree, then looked at me.  "You'd better get inside." 

Which I promptly did.

We may lose more before it's all over. 

10:00 am:

12 noon:

And still it rains and ices quickly.

The birds were a little reproachful. Once they all flocked over to check out the fallen tree, some of them flew over to the feeders and just sat, all puffed up and looking very cold and hungry.

I cleaned off the birdfeeders and refilled them, and threw some out for the squirrels.  Last weekend, while I was gone, Jack said he heard a loud noise in the garage and saw one of the squirrels dashing out.  I guess they got hungry and tried to take measures into their own hands, er, paws, but I keep their food in a large popcorn tin, and they couldn't get to it. So I headed them off at the pass and tossed out several handsful.  So far, I haven't seen the first squirrel. 

Maybe they've had to relocate.

Not a bad idea.