I haven't seen ice this bad since the Oregon ice storms off to Columbia Gorge! Last weekend, northern VA was hit by the nasty tail end of the clipper that ran up the east coast. While most of the valley below escaped, up here on TippyTop we were frozen to the gills in ice.
Saturday night:
1:40am - lily's up and vomiting. I can hear tiny shards of ice hitting the roof and windows but nothing too exciting.
3:30am - ice storm starts in earnest. I bolt out of bed, grab Vyolette who is staying with us in case we lose power and she needs warmth and start screaming "TREEEEE!" There are several large trees looming over my bedroom. I run out to the front room just in time to see the lights go out and flashes in the storm outside. Either the houses are on fire down the street or we have thunder ice and that's lightening outside. I fumble for the phone and have the power company on speed dial so report the outage and head back to bed. Another twenty minutes go by, ice is being torn from the trees and smashed against the roof (the sound that had woken me up) and the trees are being whipped around like pinwheels in the wind. I can see them in the flashes of lightening and I'm sure one will come crashing through the house.
7:30am - the storm is over hours ago. We wake up to a cold house and get the girls moving to keep warm. We have no back-up heat so watch as the house dips a degree an hour until we finally accept that the power is not coming on that night and we leave for Bryan's brother's house, 45 minutes away that evening.
5pm - Slowly we make it out of our driveway, Rowyn and I out before the car and dragging the downed tree limbs out of the way. We're being showered with hard shards of ice that fall from the trees and the dirt road is shiny with ice. We have a steep incline and after chipping the ice away from the car before we left, we're not inclined to put chains on. We finally make it to the main road, only to see ice encasing each tree and frozen road kill. We progressed in inches, dodging road crews and knowing the very steep hill leading down off the mountain to Route 7 lay before us. Luckily, FEMA headquarters are at the top of the mountain so the roads are kept as clear as possible and we made it down with little problem.
7p - after dinner we spent the night in a hotel, it's lights flickering, with the other refugees. The next morning, we took the girls to school on the off-chance it would be warmer there than at our house (it was) and Bryan, Vyolette and I went home to find three trees down on the property. The largest in our front yard, split in half and falling the opposite direction from our truck and front porch.
Crazy, eh? Power returned late Monday and last night the house made it back to 67 degrees. Anybody have a used wood stove?
I ate too much, I drank too much and didn't dance nearly enough while my buddy, Aly, was here last week. I ran that girl all over the eastern seaboard, hitting PA, NY, DC, VA, MD, DE and NJ in four days. Damn I'm good.
