Only 35 hours

Tree1208

The Northeast US was hit by a whopper of an ice storm Thursday night. Above is a pic of the worst of it for us at 7 am. I was a bit worried about one of my large pines that borders the drive. The drive clearing had enabled the tree to prodigiously produce branches on that side-the perfect entrapment for large layers of ice. So it began to lean.

The power had gone out about 5 am, and I spent the better part of 7-8 am with a leery eye out the front window, watching the lean of the tree increase and praying for the wind to remain calm. Luckily the temps increased enough that all the ice was off the trees by noon.

The power company assured me at 7am that they were working on our circuit. At 11 am the Willow and I took a hike up the road to see how bad the damage was. We saw no trees down. Then the second selectman drove by and stopped and asked if we were all set, and said they were doing well being checks on folks. Her report was that the power would be out several days. That is when I learned how badly the state was hit.

Later in the afternoon a friend called from the next town, also out of power, but offering dinner as they have a gas stove. I declined and cooked a chicken in a mixing bowl with a bit of water covered in aluminum foil, perched over the coals on two logs in the woodstove. That came out pretty well, but I melted the potholder to the bowl taking it out of the stove.

I learned from this friend, who is a state employee, that 200,000 customers were out of power in the state. OUCH. We buckled down for the long haul.

The kerosene lamps and candles got a workout that night, but I hooked up the land line and had a long conversation with another friend two towns over to help pass the evening.

We ran errands through several towns today, and found most places had power. We saw little damage and the road and skies were clear. By the time I swung back to the boonies and found out my hay guy had power back on last night I was ready to throttle him. LOL.

Just as the skies were darkening and we were doing the last-bit-of-daylight frantic scramble, the Firebird announced that two power trucks were headed up the road. Twenty minutes later we had power. Yippee!

A couple hours later I went online, and my dialup connection is sufferring. From the normal 52KBPS down to 28K. Sweet. I am assuming the phone lines took a beating as well as the power lines.

Once I read the news headlines, I was stunned. New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire were hit even harder than Maine. All told, 1.3 million customers were out of power at the height of the outage. By this afternoon, over 800,000 were still in the dark. Some might not get back on until Friday-over a week after the storm. I am so glad we were out only 35 hours.