A PhotoTour of Sorrow and Doom

So it has been a few days since we in this region of Ohio had a big Ice Storm of Doom. That night, Wednesday night, I think it was, between 20 and 30 trees in our yard uprooted, snapped, or were otherwise damaged. We live in a forest, though, so we do have trees still standing. I took pictures:

Welcome to the Wood Family's Icedeath Extravaganza!

Yes, that is where I live. It is a nice place, really. Living in a forest is pretty lovely. That is, until there is a massive ice storm, or when it is very windy. Then you wind up living in terror of a tree hitting your home. It had never happened to us before, strangely. But we weren't so lucky this time!

You see, a rather tall tree in our back yard became insanely top-heavy from all of the ice and decided to give up the fight. It uprooted in a spectacular way and crashed into our back deck and kitchen at around 4am, catapulting us out of our beds and nearly pitching us head-first into Heart Attack Canyon. A terrible canyon indeed.

Surprisingly, the roof didn't cave in around my head, killing me in the process. In fact, the roof doesn't seem to be particularly damaged at all. Really, all this Killing Tree did was break a part of the railing, and the little sun-shade thing where my mom hangs up her potted plants in summertime. It also hit our satellite dish and broke a few decorative trees. But it could have been about nine hundred times more tragic.

But the back yard was not the only victim in this ice storm...

I am not sure if you can tell there, but that is the view out of the front porch, looking down the driveway. However, you cannot see down the driveway. That is, unless you have the ability to see through fallen trees! And for all I know - you might!

Three trees fell across our driveway, crushing the gate (as seen in the photo above) and snapping no less than THREE pine trees, much to my mother's dismay. My mother, you see, really loves her pine trees, and planted all of the ones on our property on her own.

Oh, poor little sad and broken pine trees! I think that one to our right is actually weeping for its dead friend. Sorrow!

Now, some of you from more reasonable regions of the world might not even be able to comprehend an Ice Storm. Even I can barely understand, but, essentially, instead of snowing, the weather decides to rain. Even though it may be 20F outside. Then the rain freezes instantly upon landing on anything. It coats all the limbs and twigs of each tree, it even coats each individual blade of grass. I assume it also coats animals and may even kill them if they stop moving. Freezing rain.

But I also noticed that there were times when it wasn't raining - but it wasn't snowing, either. The sky was spitting out what I can only describe as Ice Pellets. Little spheres of ice which were not exactly hail. They stuck to the ice that was already there. Also, it sleeted some. Which is along the same lines as everything else I've mentioned.

Here, at least, the ice accumulated until we had about 5 inches of the stuff over everything.

And as it is only December, and like a week ago it was in the 50sF, the ground is not frozen. So the trees get all of this weight up on the branches and simply overturn and DIE. It's so sad. But here, look, here is a picture of a sample of what all of the tree branches looked like.

Actually, the branches STILL look like that, as it has only gotten colder since that day. Last night, it was even -10F - without a windchill to make it colder. Although, I am certain that there was a windchill. I just didn't hear what that temperature would have been.

Anyway, this is certainly long enough at this point. So I shall thank you for reading this far. I am traumatized by the sounds of trees falling. And I am looking forward to springtime.

The End.