Winter Storm 2012

I have never experienced a storm like the one we just did in the 34 years I've lived in this state.  And the same can be said of my hubby who has lived here 42 years of his life.  With that said, I will tell you the journey that we experienced these last 5 days.

Wednesday 1/28:  Knew that a snow storm was coming and we were preparing for that.  We had cancelled children's choir and AWANA at church that night.  The snow had already started the weekend before, but we hadn't really had a large accumulation.  We finally did get an accumulation of about 6 inches.  At about 8:45 Wednesday evening, the power went out. With the snow coming down outside, it didn't look promising, but I wasn't expecting what happened next.

That evening it kept snowing.  I believe that it snowed until sometime Thursday afternoon when the snow turned to frozen rain.  By now I had already made 2 pots of coffee on the propane camp stove that we set up outside on the porch.  I also cooked us a dinner of scrambled eggs and frozen hash browns that night on the stove in my wonderful cast iron skillets!  Thursday evening my hubby told me that he could hear branches falling outside in the dark.  It was from the frozen rain weighing down the snow on our trees.

Friday was the day that we really experienced the trees and things falling.  When I woke up that morning, there was already evidence of branches down in places.  My hubby's car, that we couldn't start to move, almost got hit by one branch that first night.  My nephew's car had branches covering the top, but didn't hit the car I think.  I went outside Friday morning and could hear branches falling off of trees everywhere.  I mean everywhere.  Just standing outside for 1 minute you could see at least 5  branches fall and maybe even a tree top or two.  The freezing rain continued.

All day Friday when we stepped outside we could hear and see limbs, branches, tree tops and many whole trees just falling all over.  It was a weird experience.  The big tree out front that worries me in the big wind storms didn't drop that many branches.  One it did drop was right behind hubby's car, which was the 2nd close call.  After it got dark on Friday night it was very unnerving because we could hear things falling all around us but we couldn't see anything.  Sometimes we heard cracks so loud they sounded like gun shots.  Some trees fell so close we felt them hit.

It was hard to get the kids to sleep that night.  No noise to cover up the sounds of the woods just crumbling around us. All the rest of the day it was falling snowballs, iceballs and branches until the snow melted.

On Saturday we were still cold and tired of being in the dark but thought the worst was over.  We went to bed that evening and I told Amanda it should be nice to fall asleep without something to worry about.  She agreed.  Around 2:30 in the morning we woke to the sounds of a tree hitting the house.  The wind was blowing furiously outside.  The kids and I were sleeping on the couch in the living room and it sounded like it hit the master bedroom where hubby was.  Amanda yelled and started to panic, and we heard hubby say it was ok.  We laid back down and I rubbed Amanda's back and hair to block the noise some and calm her down.  We saw a bunch of blue lights in the sky and assumed they were transformers blowing.  The wind makes me so nervous already, I could hardly take the panic I felt.  We prayed so much during these days to keep our worries down.

When I got up on Saturday morning I walked around the house, dodging the gigantic snowballs and iceballs that were melting and falling from the trees, along with branches still.  I wanted to see what hit the house.  I couldn't find anything.  But I did find a huge maple tree in the back yard had fallen over.  That surely had to be the sound we heard.  It was just so loud it sound to all 3 of us that it hit the house.  This was part of a tree that Amanda and I watched the top just fall right off 2 mornings before into our backyard.

There had been several trees that came down in our driveway.  A couple took down our power lines.  Ruined some fences.  The one day the kids and I were sitting on the couch in my living room and we heard branches breaking and turned to see if we could see it.  It was branches falling off of the tree in front of my sister-in-law's house.  We watched 3 big ones fall right onto her porch roof.

Never in my life.  I've never experienced this.  I think it was Friday or Saturday night when my nephew borrowed a generator from a friend and we were able to plug in a tv, space heater and a lamp when it was running.  It didn't heat us up, but helped take a bit of the chill off.  There were several times when we could see our breath in the house.  There also were a few times when it was actually warmer outside!

Our power was finally restored today, Monday the 23rd.  We were out of power for 5 days and 5 nights.  We bundled up every morning, spent much time snuggling under blankets and with cats who also felt the cold.  When I finally got to get out of the house and drive around, I couldn't believe the devastation.  It looks like a hurricane came through.  Tops of trees are gone everywhere.  The trees that don't have their leaves are the most noticeable.  Especially when you see a bunch of them together and all you see are broken tops.

I am so thankful to my Heavenly Father that he kept us safe through this storm!  And my house in one piece!