Our area experienced a freezing rain/ice storm Wednesday with significant repercussions. Most of our neighborhood lost power for most of Wednesday with many (including my parents) still without power five days later. We lost internet Wednesday and didn’t get it back until Friday.
The forecast leading up to the ice storm looked fairly innocuous. There was to be less than an inch of freezing rain/ice early Wednesday morning with temperatures hovering around freezing (32° F) warming slightly Thursday and then back into the high 60s/low 70s for the weekend.
Wednesday morning was pretty magical with the ice encrusted trees. It wasn’t long before the sound of tree limbs cracking began to resonate through the neighborhood. It seemed like every few minutes we would hear a limb crack and crash to the ground.
The worst offenders for severing limbs were the to be expected Ashe Juniper and Hackberry trees but we also several Cedar Elms shed some sizeable pieces including one that took a trip through our fence. An Arizona Ash limb took out the secondary power line serving my parent’s house ripping their meter box off the wall.
Walking around our neighborhood it looked a tornado had come through. Two years ago, winter storm Uri caused some tree damage but not nearly as much as this one day ice storm. Rather then getting snow that would shed off we got freezing rain that quickly turned to ice encapsulating the trees adding significant weight.
The virtues of being off grid