ICE STORM

                                                                March Ice Storm

The spring season perhaps best exemplifies the fickleness of Mother Nature.  Most years at this time, I recall sublime weather here on Cedar Ridge.  Hikes in the woods, enjoying warm 4o and 5o degree temperatures.  The advent of the first Mourning Cloak or Compton's Tortoiseshell Butterfly from their frozen hibernations.  The first sighting of the Eastern Chipmunk.  This year, Mother Nature seems to have forgotten about the warm breezes and substituted them with wind chill.  Since January she has dished out 2009 weather with a vengeance. 

This past week we had an ice storm which could have been much worse.  I say much worse for us, because our neighbors to the south in Lake County are still without electricity... since Tuesday.  I saw images on television of vast devastation of trees; some areas literally looked like they had been bombed.  

Mary and I watched as the layers of ice grew on the tree branches and wires of our bird feeders.  The icicles grew on the finch feeder, almost closing off the landing area and blocking the seed outlets.  Branches on all the trees began drooping little by little as the ice began encasing them.  

We filled containers with water and charged up our cellphones in preparation of a power outage.  We don't have a backup for heat since we have an all electric home.  Our secondary heat source is a wood pellet stove and it's blower and auger also relies on electricity.  At 11:40 p.m. the lights blinked once and that was it....

The next morning when I looked out the window, the first glimpse entertained thoughts of future "electric" despair.  It looked grim as ice covered and encased each twig and branches of all the trees.  In our yard, the white cedars looked in the worst shape.  The thick boughs looked like frozen waterfalls and the paper birch were bent so bad, some of the tops were frozen to the ground.  

I chipped the ice off the bird feeders and threw some seeds on the ground for the Common Redpolls and Pine Siskins.  I made a suet post for the woodpeckers a while back, by drilling out 1 1/2 inch holes.   We mix up cornmeal, lard and peanut butter and fill the holes.  The northeast side of the post was solid ice, so the woodpeckers had to work on the leeward side.

I took my camera and carefully walked out on the expansive, never ending skating rink.  It was a sight to behold.  I have seen one other bad ice storm in my life and this one had all the earmarks of topping it.  I gingerly crossed the driveway and made it to the trail that leads into the Superior National Forest.  The crust on the snow was covered with a half inch of solid ice; the red squirrels were literally skating on top of the snow from tree to tree.

The trail was buried with ice covered and arched trees.  I had to walk along side the trail, through the alders, crashing through the icy crust, up to my knees in snow.  I could see my trail feeder ahead, it was still hanging in a white cedar.  I whistled for my chickadees and they immediately flew down the trail to meet me.  Right behind them was my Common Redpoll friend and Norris my itinerant Red-breasted Nuthatch.  It was good to see the whole "crew" that feed out of my hand.  I fed them for sometime until all the usual suspects showed up and were accounted for. 

I began taking photos of the glistening, ice covered trees.  The most bizarre sight was a forty foot  paper birch, completely bowed and the heavy top frozen to the ground.  I began taking photos of the "catkins" encased in ice.  The chickadees and nuthatches follow me everywhere in the woods and had to get into the act.  I captured some interesting shots of them perched on the branches of the icy birch.  

Resilience is maybe not the proper word, but the trees of the forest are indeed tough.  I was amazed that their damage was not greater... although I was careful to stand in open areas to avoid a "major league" concussion from falling ice and branches.  It sounded like a war echoing throughout the forest with the crashing tree branches and falling ice. 

 

I returned home and the electricity came on after a 9 1/2 hours outage.  The freezing rain continued and the new forecast sounded dire.  The ice storm warning was extended through the evening into the coming day, we were to receive another 1/4  to 1/2  inch of ice.  As nightfall approached, we fired up the wood pellet stove to get the house warmer for an impending power outage.  At 9:40 the lights went out and the candles were lit.

The temperature at this time was 33.4 degrees and the heavens had opened up with pouring rain. I called the electric company and found out it was a transmission line problem and the entire county was out of power.  That gave me hope that this outage would be fixed soon because of the one location.  At 1:20 a.m. the power came on along with our front yard motion light.  I went to the patio window and looked out... I couldn't believe my eyes.  In a little over three hours of pouring down rain, the entire ice coatings had been removed from the trees.  There was no ice anywhere to be seen.  The 33 degree temperature had saved our trees and power lines.  It was like a small miracle, because a 2-4 degree difference in temperature, meant  the difference between "preservation or destruction."

Morning light showed that all was well up the trail.  The birds were at the feeder, the ice was gone and everything was back to some semblance of order.  I suspect when the trees begin to bud and leaf, their scars will heal and eventually be hidden.

"For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver." ~ Martin Luther