Ice Storm 2014

I thought I would write a post about our recent ice storm this week. We here in the South get a lot of jokes about us being shut down every time a flake of snow drops but what people don't understand is that our road crews just aren't prepared for it and don't have the equipment to deal with any snow or ice so it does shut us down. Worse are the trees. Trees down here grow in clay so they have very shallow roots. They also are not used to any heavy snow and ice on them so when we do get snow and ice the branches break or the trees fall and we have massive power outages. I read that 700,000 people in Georgia lost power in this one--some of which, including my sister, do not have power still. Yesterday I read there were still 26,000 without power in Augusta, 11,000 in Evans and still 500 in Thomson where I live.
Anyway, we knew it was coming Wednesday. I had done a little shopping on Tuesday and was supposed to try to exchange a propane tank but it was pouring rain Tuesday and I took the chance that our propane would last. That was a mistake.
It started sleeting Wednesday morning.

The weather report said it was going to sleep for 15 hours in our area. I thought they were crazy but turns out they were right. The power went out Wednesday morning here for about an hour and a half. The temps were in the 30's but no big deal we lit the oven for heat and lit some candles. I had 100 candles stocked up (I made myself stop at 100 thinking I was getting ridiculous).

When the power came back on we were pleased and thought out "storm" wasn't all that bad but it continued to sleet all day. 

We stayed inside as everything was all icy.

Obviously, nobody was going up or down our ice slick of a road. Everything was normal until about 7:30 p.m. when the power went out again and didn't come back on. It was a cold night and we woke up in the morning to a temp of 52 degrees inside. We lit candles and several of the oil lamps (I had two containers lamp oil and a few extra wicks) and the oven. 

Phil went out with my coffee pot I have been saving for a couple years now, just for this occasion. It plugs into a cigarette lighter. He couldn't get any of the car doors open but luckily managed to get the truck door open. 

Unfortunately our little "Quick Brew" coffee maker didn't live up to it's name and took 45 minutes to produce half a pot of only warm coffee. We gave up on it and I boiled some water on the stove and poured it on the grounds in our regular coffee maker. 

The temperature got up to 64 degrees inside and then the propane ran out. It dropped to the low sixties, and I lit more and more candles and it stayed in the low 60's. Outside the sleet stopped and I took a few pictures. 

The plants around the pond were bulbs that had come up already. The paperwhites had even bloomed. 

Those are tulip bulbs sprouted around the fountain.

My poor johnny-jump-ups (violas). These did survive just fine however.

There was actually a pair of birds making a nest in this little bird house. I hope they changed their mind as these little ceramic ones are just for decoration as they get too hot in the spring for the birds. 

The sun did come out and the ice started melting pretty good. Phil got out on the road and chopped up the ice and added some salt I had bought until finally he felt he could get one of the vehicles out. This was about 3:30 in the afternoon. He walked up to the main road first though to take a look and see if the main road was clear because there was no sense in trying to get one of our vehicles off our dirt road if he couldn't go anywhere anyway. The main road looked good so he came back and got the truck and went to town to look for propane. Unfortunately, there was none to be found and the little store that usually fills our tank was closed as well. Instead he thought he would just buy us something to eat at one of the restaurants but found that the lines were so long that he would never get in. He came home without having bought anything. 

But we still had to cook supper. A while back I had been given a little tabletop grill for free at work. Phil got it out of the box and put it together. He then made a wood fire in it since we had no charcoal (that is my spoon wood by the way). 

And that is how we cooked supper. Afterwards I put a pot of wax on the grill to melt down and make more candles since we were going through them so fast trying to keep the house warm. I thought we were in for another cold night but the power popped back a little after 7:00 that night. It took a bit to get used to having it again. We left the heaters on all night just because the warmth felt SO GOOD!

Friday Phil was able to go get us a tank of propane at the little store down the street and the roads were completely clear so I could get out and go to my violin lesson and then got to town to do some shopping. There are small branches all over the yard that need to be cleaned up but this was the only large one that fell in our yard so we were very lucky.

Friday night we had the earthquake- 4.4.  Scared us half to death but didn't do any damage .We have never had an earthquake here in all the years I have lived here and we really didn't know at first if it had been one or not. Phil turned out the t.v. and I turned on facebook and we got the answer at about the same time. 

I hear there is a possibility for another winter storm next weekend. Phil and I ordered a small generator today. I hope it gets here before then.