The incoming freezing rain started Monday afternoon, Jan.26th. Later in the evening it turned into freezing sleet, then it went back to lots more freezing rain. It eventully turned into snow...I think that came Tuesday night.

Early Tuesday it was still pretty out:

The Liriodendron tulipifera was still intact:

Our power went out at 11:30 Tuesday, Jan. 27th.

The icicles were not very long yet:

By Wednesday 28th I wrote on my calendar: Devestating ice storm. Trees broken to pieces. Light snow on top of yesterday's ice.

I believe it was sometime this morning that I heard the 4-trunk birch lose it's first trunk. I will always believe it was the added weight of a large squirrel's nest that cause it to break.

You can only see three trunks in this pic. I couldn't get in a position to take a pic of all 4. The forth is behind the lefthand trunk...bowed over to the west. They went all 4 points of the compass....

The one that broke is the one in the middle, but this does not show the break! I am sure I took a pic of it at the time, but can't find it.

The cracking and crashing continued on all through that day and night, and the next day and night. We spent most of our daylight hours running from window to window to see what all was falling. The limbs were bowed down so low all over the yard we could hardly see beyond the closest ones. The view was blocked from the bay window towards the shop building, by the serviceberry:

A very large branch had broken on it, and lay the full length of the flowerbed. It just barely reached the Ginkgo, and only pinned down one branch. That branch did not break, but another one did. It will not change the overall shape of the tree....thank goodness.

It is in the left hand side of this pic:

That is the Honey Locust on the right.

The Heritage Birch was bowing lower and lower, and I was in terrible dread that it too would snap:

This is it taken through the bedroom window screen:

That is one of the tuliptree's limbs to the right of it. It snapped, and the broken end wedged into the ground. The top of it wedged beneath the house eaves. If it had fallen a few feet farther to the right it would have taken out the spare bedroom window!

BTW, while all this was going on, and after the power went out, I turned the spare bedroom into a refrigerator for the perishables.

Thursday Jan. 29th our cousin, the local sheriff, walked to our house to check on us. He was going to all the neighbors. He had to park at the head of our driveway and walk because the drive was blocked by fallen limbs.
Earlier a next door neighbor had called.

The temps had risen to a bit above freezing and was beginning to fall from trees. Friday 30th a breeze came up that added to the breakage and ice falling. Great showers of ice cascading down.

It became tricky for me to get firewood. I had spread ashes on my paths, and would get slabs from the front of the shed, and 'rounds' from the back. One trunk of the Birch put a stop to the slabs in front:

So all the access that I had was the path under the Red Oak, and it was breaking, as well as dropping showers of ice! I am sure my guardian angel was looking out for me, and neither branches nor ice hit me!

Friday Jan. 30th the Birch trunk, that was bowed down to the ground beside Nolon's bedroom, gave up and broke! I hated that!

You can see the first broken trunk clearly in that pic. There is a long split (at least 3 foot long) sticking up from the break, in the center on the tree.

I will stop here, and not press my luck....

I will continue with more later...

Marian

The birches are amazing! Some of them are still slumped over up here, and I wonder what they will look like in the upcoming "green" months. I'm sorry yours snapped.

Looking forward to more pictures!

Saucy

V.

Oh, Saucy! Both of is saw honey bees in a witch hazel at the north corner of our house today! I was wandering around taking more pics and heard them. Nolon said there were both yellow and black ones. I could not see them well enough to verify that. I tried to take pics of them , but only succeeded in getting a distant shot of one.

Marian

Mary.

The pictures are beautiful - but scarey....

The refrigerator bedroom sounds a little chilly! Is your wood stove enough to heat the whole house or just some rooms?

It's good that you have neighbours that check in on you guys at times like that.

Deanne

Kathy in Napa

Some of the shrubs that were beneath the bowed over canopys of the birches were unharmed. The Dawn Redwood and Maackii were under the Heritage Birch. I was really concerned about them, but they are both fine. My best Japanese Viburnum was under the birch top by the woodshed. It is fine.
I am sweating out the survival of the Burkwood Viburnum in front of the shop. The extremely tall Wild Black Cherry has a couple of large broken hanging down branches. If they fall, they will most likely smash that Viburnum. It (the Viburnum)is covered with flower buds. I took some pics of the cherry today, and hope to add them to this thread. It had a third hanger, that did fall during the latest wind, but barely missed the Viburnum.

My small Fringe Tree was unscathed. The Honey locust that towers over it lost a sizable limb, but it fell towards the house, and did not hit anything. There are several more hangers on the same side. My concern about them is that they could hit the dinningroom windows. All of it's broken ones are on the northern side. There were no broken ones on the other sides.
The Honey Locust in the front yard lost one good-sized limb that fell in our pathway out from the house. It is the one in the pic of where I fed the birds. There are at least three more smaller ones hanging high on the northwest side.
I don't think there are any hangers in the tuliptree. All of the broken ones fell to the ground! At least half of it's canopy broke.
Most of the yard dogwoods and serviceberries have at least one broken limb, but most are recoverable.The big one in front of the bay window was hit the worse. We noticed it has a fractured limb up high that we are hoping will heal It is not broken...yet. We plan on using a come-along to bring the huge limb, that was blocking the view to the shop, back to a closer position to the rest of the tree. We thought sure it was a goner, but when the ice went off, it returned to almost it's original position. It had pulled away at the bottom, but not broken. It is actually more of a trunk, than a limb. It was bowed over the large Viburnum at the corner of the house. I thought sure that V would be damaged, but it wasn't.

The Ninebark in the bed near the deck was mashed down into a small wad by the ice. I was setting at the dinningroom table working a puzzle and saw what appeared to be an 'explosion' in it. I thought a limb from the red oak by the woodshed had hit it. After the ice cleared from it I discovered that a couple of it's limbs had broken, causing the 'explosion'. It looks quite okay now. All of our redbuds had at least one limb broken.

The Sweet Gum out front has most of it's central limbs gone. It looks pretty homely!

On Saturday Jan 31, I had 4 phone calls. The first was one of the men from our congregation. The second was my sister in Idaho. She had heard about the storm on TV,(she has called 2-3 times since, including today). The third was a very good long time friend from the Harrison congregation. Her power had come back. And the 4th was our Tim.
I wrote on my calendar, " Ice all off trees but still on ground - slushy."

I do not remember what day the 2 men from the Forest Service came and cut the trees out of our driveway. Probably the 30th or 31st. They moved the ones that blocked our circle drive also.

I think it was Monday the 2nd that I went to town. The county road out to the highway was, and still is, lined with all the trees and limbs that were removed from the road. I think the Forest Service did that also. In one wooded field above the road I counted over a dozen large trees uprooted within a very small area! Many of them had fallen into the road, and only the offending tops were removed.

Marian

The second is downed limbs in front of the storage shed:

:-)

As for venturing out on the ice. I just did what I had to do. The only place I went was to the woodshed after I spread ashes in front of me. Because of the warmth of the ground the accumulation was not deep, on the ground. Naturally, it does not have to be deep to be slick, but I was extremely cautious. I did not even step out on the front porch until it thawed from near the door, then I stepped out only far enough to throw food to thee birds.

I wish I had a camera that took good close-ups. Among the takers of the bird food was a Towhee,a pair of Red Birds, Mourning Doves, White Breasted Sparrows, Juncos, and the ever present Crows.

Woody, I thought I saw a comment from you after Marie's too??? Strange.... I should have responded to it immediately, and that would have been proof!
The 'refrigerator' bedroom got down into the lower 40s. That is where I wanted it to stay, but the warmer weather did not cooperate. I even opened the windows at night to keep it cold in there. Then, when it continued to warm up outside, I hung heavy blankets over the windows to attempt to hold in the cold! It apparantly was cold enough. All the refrigerator stuff that has not been used yet is fine.

Our wood stove is in the livingroom, and the heat very seldom warms the back bedrooms all the way up to above the 60s, even when the livingroom is in the 70s. We run the livingroom ceiling fan on cold days to spread the heat around. The battery powered fan that I have, has a hook on it that I ended up using to hang over the door to the utility room. to push warm air into it, for the plants. That worked good too. That room is 4 steps lower than the rest of the house, so all the cold gathers in it. It has a cement floor, too. I sat some food items on that floor part of the time. I am sure it was sufficienly cold enough!

I am sure you have all heard the saying, "Necessity is the mother of invention." I am quite good at 'inventing' :-).

I am afraid 'spring' is still some distance from most of us. There is the chance of snow in our early forecast, and more rain (possibly freezing) next week! Please...no more of that!

Yes, the damage to our trees is espacially bad for us. We have no prospects of seeing them recover due to our ages. I will try to accept the fact that they are now 'picturesque'! They have 'character'. More wealthier folks can have the damaged trees removed, and replaced with sizable 'pretty' trees. Any of ours that shade our house are not expendable. With no AC we really depend on them for cooling.

I have several small potted trees that I can put out, but will need help with the digging of the holes. Some are rather fast growing, so I will (most likely) see results from them.
I enjoy both the beauty, and the shade of our trees. At one time I longed for my own arboretum. I had a pretty good start at it. :-) Nature is very cruel in this area, but it could be much worse. We still have a roof (of our own) over our heads. Something that a lot of people do not have.

Mason bees can bee darker than most honey bees, though honey bees come in lots of shades between brown and black.

I'll be excited to know :)

Saucy

I wish I could have taken a closer pic, but maybe you can see it okay.

Michelle

Your bees have some pollen to collect! My bees just came out to collect water and they cleaned their hive. The ground around the hive is littered with dead bees and excrement - food for the flowers :)

Saucy

Martie

Eden

I think part of the problem is that it had been unseasonably warm, and the sap was up. And talking about sap, the ends of the broken trunks on the river birch are 'bleeding' vigoriously, and have long icicles hanging down, on cold days. I way be weird, but I ate several of the sap icicles today. They have no didtinctive flavor. :-)

I cleaned the debris from the base of the honey locust at the end of the house. The dafodils at it's base are getting ready to bloom!

The Cornelian cherry is starting to bloom, too.

Eden

I have decided I will have Nolon cut the Ninebark down. It is old and has a lot of dead in it. There is a volunteer dogwood back of it, that we will leave. It is only about 3 foot tall now. But they grow very fast here.

In a way, I am starting to get excited about the possibilities of adding new trees and shrubs.

Eden

As for myself, I think of my age, in relation to waiting for new growth of any large growing items. But, in the long run, it really is not important. I will just enjoy what I have, in it's present condition. :-)

I can still look forward to my deck containers. They may have a little more sunshine than the last year or so, but that will be okay....I think. At least the Hawthorn that I hang so many pots in, is undamaged. I call it my 'hanging tree' :-) The front of the house will have more southwest sun if the Heritage Birch continues to lean so far to the northwest! That will be a bummer. Not only will the house get too much sun, but it will not be as good for the row of potted plants that I like to set at the foundation.:-(
Oh well....