The Weather Outside is Frightful

Mighty cold

Finally, it has arrived -- the blast of cold weather we've been reading, hearing, and thinking about for the last week. The wind is howling through the trees, and the thermometer on the porch says +5°F. By morning, it will be zero.

Of course, the cold temperatures in southern Kentucky are nothing much, compared to states north of us. Some of our rain and sleet was "flash-frozen" on our roads when the cold air arrived tonight, but we didn't get enough snow to cover the ground. I'm thankful.

Yesterday was a mild sunny day. The sky was blue until sunset when a low gray bank of clouds appeared on the western horizon. It was the sort of day that once might have lured a pioneer into hitching up his team and setting off on a long trip to town for supplies. We've all heard the sad stories of people who perished in winter storms that appeared from nowhere. Now we have an entire weather industry that keeps us warned about dangerous weather we might not otherwise anticipate.

About 3:00 pm yesterday, one of my ears suddenly began to ache. I didn't recognize that as a weather omen but Keely (my personal scientist) pointed out that the barometric pressure was dropping rapidly, and my somewhat stuffy head probably wasn't equalized yet. I think she was right. Six hours later, the earache was gone.

My father's cattle must have been good at reading the weather signs. When a winter storm was near, they always gathered at the windbreaks closest to the buildings. Remembering them makes me worry about the livestock and other animals that are outside in this weather, and the people who are working outside doing important, necessary things that are made very difficult by the cold.

I'm also a little worried about the electricity which has blinked six times tonight so far. Wind gusts are blowing something against the wires and creating a short circuit somewhere, I suspect. We have plenty of flashlight batteries and lamp oil, but I hope we don't need them. Pennyrile Electric posted on Facebook a few minutes ago that they have power outages affecting over 1200 members.

Earlier today, a Sunday School song (Psalms 118:24) came to mind: "This is the day that the Lord hath made; let us rejoice and be glad in it." I am glad tonight, most of all for warmth and shelter. And, while it's a little hard to rejoice, I do respect and honor the Creator who put the mighty forces of nature in place and set them in motion.

Early February

We've hardly had any winter weather this year. With temperatures in the 50s or higher every day, the daffodils have been blooming for a couple of weeks.

Now, we're getting a reminder that it's still February. Tonight, the temperature will fall to around 13°F, and the high on Saturday will be about 27°F -- a whole day below the freezing point. Then, on Monday night, we may get some ice and/or snow. I would prefer snow.

Snowy Barn

Photo from early February

Nearly all of my photos for January and February of this year have been snow scenes. Here's one from a couple of weeks ago that I missed posting. I hope I don't have the opportunity to take any more photos like this one until next Christmas or thereabouts!

Winter, Continued

Spring has not sprung -- yet.

The view from our side porch, about 7 AM Thursday

This photo of our snowy landscape is for the folks who live far away and wonder what's happening in Christian County. If you live here, you should ignore this post! You already know that it snowed again and again this week. (Yes, two significant snows.)

The schools were in session for most of Monday, and that was the only day of school for the week. The school buses had a little trouble on the slick roads, Monday afternoon,. According to the Kentucky New Era, a bus went off Highway 800, somewhere near Crofton.  A Christian County Schools spokesperson reported about a half-dozen other minor accidents. No one was hurt.

I've been pondering why our buses have trouble in ice and snow when, in some states, the school buses travel in ice and snow without incident, day after day. Part of the problem surely is that our drivers aren't experienced with such conditions. But some of the problem, I think, is the roads our buses travel. Even in good weather, narrow, winding, hilly backroads are challenging for a big vehicle. Taking a bus on those roads when they are slick with ice and snow is just asking for trouble.

In central Kansas where my brother lives, many of the rural roads are straight as an arrow. From the air, they must look like lines on a piece of graph paper.  In Christian County, our backroads are like the C. W. McCall song, "Wolf Creek Pass".

Well, from there on down, it just wasn't real purdy:
It was hairpin county and switchback city.
One of 'em looked like a can full'a worms;
Another one looked like malaria germs...

I'm exaggerating, but only to make my point.

I am so ready for spring. Next week, we are supposed to have much warmer temperatures -- in the low 60s on a couple of days. If we have a few days like that, the daffodils will start blooming.

About 2 PM on Weds. as I drove home from work

Late Light on a Wet Day

Uneasy skies

In Hopkinsville, late yesterday afternoon, the sun pierced the clouds and spotlighted the elevators. After a dark, wet day, the sudden light was dazzling.  Half an hour later, the sun slipped below a dark bank of clouds. Darkness came quickly.

The blizzard is passing north of us. Here, we are supposed to get rain, high winds, and colder temperatures. We have a wind advisory until 3 PM today. Wind gusts may reach 40 mph.

I am worried about friends and family who live in areas that are feeling the storm's full force. Despite the weather, some people have to work outside -- the farmers and ranchers have to feed their livestock, for example. I hope the travelers all got off the roads and found refuge.

In my mind, I just heard my mother say that I should pray for people, instead of worrying!

Is the storm passing through your area? Please tell us about it.

More of the Same

Snow, again.

At least once a week since Christmas, we've had snow. Each time, the schools have closed for a day or two, but it hasn't snowed enough yet to keep me home from work. I took this photo through my car window yesterday morning, going down our hill to the highway. A layer of frozen slush lay under the snow, so the drive to work was a long, slow crawl.

One of these cold, white mornings, I'll open the front door and look outside. As I'm standing there, wondering if I should try to go to work, the phone will ring. I'll answer, and my boss will say, "Hi, Genevieve. The roads aren't safe this morning, so don't try to come in. Stay home today! And we want to pay you for your full shift, anyway, just because you're a great employee!"

I don't really expect that to happen, folks, but we all have our little dreams.

Thrills and Chills

Windshield photos

By the time I came home from work late yesterday afternoon, the ground was white with new snow. When I turned off the highway onto our little road, I stopped to get our mail.

Our Mennonite neighbor lady and her two youngest daughters were coming down the hill. I waited for them so they wouldn't have to walk on the slippery edges of the road as I passed. It occurred to me that I should steal a photo as I was sitting there, so I took this through the windshield of my car.

Whenever we have a cold, windy, snowy day, it's a sure bet that our neighbor lady will be out for a stroll. She loves braving the weather in her big boots and her wooly scarf and mittens. True to form, when she got to the bottom of the hill, she told me that she was really enjoying the weather!

The roads were slick last night and slicker this morning. WHOP in Hopkinsville reported numerous accidents. School was cancelled.

I left for work half an hour early. The road was a bright ribbon of ice. I stopped for a moment and took a photo through the windshield.

Just a few minutes later, I hit a little pothole or patch in the road, and it sent my car into a skid. In a second, I did a 180-degree turn and found myself facing the opposite direction. I didn't go into the ditch. I came safely to a stop.  After a moment of reflection, I turned around in a nearby driveway and went down the road again, more cautiously than ever.

It's a good thing that I was only going 25 mph, and no one else was on the road.  And if it had been time for me to go, I certainly wouldn't have had time to repent  and say my prayers!

A Snowball Dodged

Light snowfall in Christian County, KY

Christian County, KY, 1/12/11

The first snowstorm went south of us, and the second snowstorm went north. After several days of weather advisories in Christian County, KY, we don't even have enough snow to cover the grass.

Nonetheless, our schools were closed on Monday and Tuesday. In the early hours of those days, snow was falling and the rural roads were slick. Road conditions were judged unsafe for school buses.

Christian County and our neighbor to the west, Trigg County, along with Montgomery County, TN, just across the state line, were back in school today.

My supervisor at work said her children were disgusted when they looked at the school closings map on television this morning. Nearly every school district in western Tennessee and Kentucky cancelled classes again -- except Christian, Trigg, and Montgomery.

I don't think the Mennonite children in our neighborhood have missed a day yet at their little school. They didn't even take a vacation between Christmas and New Year's Day.

White Christmas

Snowy Christmases, past and present

We had a white Christmas in Christian County this year. The snow started about 6:00 pm on Christmas Eve and continued intermittently throughout Christmas Day. This photo was taken in late afternoon on the day after Christmas.

Keely, Taurus, and their friend Adam spent Christmas Day with us. After they left that evening, I swept several inches of snow off my car so it would be ready to drive in the morning. A couple more inches of snow fell during the night, and when I went out to start my car the next morning, I had to sweep it off again.

My kids have a favorite family story about one of the few Christmas snows in their childhood. We went to church on Christmas morning that year. By the time church was over, several inches of snow covered the ground. We were surprised! We didn't know that snow was in the forecast!

I was driving, and I had no problems until I turned off the highway to the little gravel lane that leads uphill to our house.  I made it about halfway up the long,  hill before the car started to slide. When I let up on the gas, I lost momentum and came to a stop.

Dennis got out and pushed the car. That wasn't successful, so he decided to drive while I pushed. I got behind the car and gave it all my muscle while Dennis stepped on the gas aggressively. When he got the car moving, he roared up the hill, leaving me to walk home. The kids didn't know whether to laugh or cry about leaving Mom behind, but I understood. If he had stopped, we'd have gained nothing.

Several days before Christmas in 2004, we had the closest thing to a blizzard that I've seen in Kentucky --  seven or eight inches of snow with strong wind and very cold temperatures. Dennis was in Kuwait that Christmas with AAFES (the PX system, from which he has now retired), so he missed out on that storm.

We always heat with wood, but normally, we have a thermostat-controlled propane heater that turns on when needed. During that storm, we had only wood heat. We had bought a new propane heater a few days earlier. After the installer disconnected the old heater, he realized that he didn't have everything he needed to connect the new heater.

That night, while I was shoving firewood into the stove and listening to the wind howl, I thought about Laura Ingalls Wilder's blizzard story in On the Banks of Plum Creek. Pa and Ma had gone to town, leaving Laura and Mary at home with little Carrie. When the blizzard hit, Laura knew that it was important to have lots of firewood inside. Otherwise, people had to burn their furniture to keep from freezing. With fear-driven energy, Laura and Mary hauled the entire woodpile inside their little cabin, finishing just as their parents arrived home.

Isaac's longtime friend DJ was home from Oregon that Christmas, and he was visiting us on the night of the snowstorm. The next morning, the storm had ended, and it was clear, cold, and still. Isaac and DJ bundled up and went out with the sleds.

I didn't know that they were sledding down the hills on the highway until they got back home! "We'd have heard any cars coming!" they assured me with the wisdom of 15-year-olds. I felt a little better when they told me that there were only two sets of tire tracks on the highway.

A day or two later, the snow was still on the ground and the roads were still bad. Keely got a ride home from Murray on Christmas Eve with her friend Kyla who had a Jeep.  A tall fellow named Taurus crawled out of the Jeep with Keely and spent that Christmas with us. He's been here for every Christmas since then, and in October of 2010, he became our son-in-law.

I hope you've enjoyed your Christmas, white or otherwise. And if it's snowy where you are, stay warm and be careful!

A Thin Icy Crust

Slick, but not thick

The students of Christian County, KY, were supposed to attend school today -- President's Day -- to make up one of the many "snow days" they've enjoyed recently.

Old Man Winter intervened. Sunday evening, a thin glaze of ice formed on the roads, and half an inch of snow fell on top of it. The new surface was very slick, so school was canceled today. The holiday, which had been declared a make-up day, became a holiday again.

This morning, Dennis decided he would push our wheeled trash-bin down our hill (pictured below) as he  usually does. (He always thinks it's easier to push the trash down than to load the trash-bin into the truck and haul it down.) When he got back to the house, he admitted that he had fallen. The new glaze over the old snow-pack on the hill was slicker than he had expected. Fortunately, he didn't break any bones.

I felt a little shaken by Dennis's fall as I left for work. The small rural blacktops had a white icy crust. I was determined to avoid the vehicular equivalent of falling on the ice, so I drove with an excess of caution. Finally, I reached larger highways that had been salted. I was a little late for work, but I arrived in one piece. About half of the staff stayed home, so it was an interesting day.

Isaac was home from college this past weekend. He went back yesterday before the precipitation began freezing on the roads. When I talked to him on the phone this evening, he told me that the sidewalks on the Murray State campus were treacherous this morning. He nearly fell several times on his way to his first class.

If Keely had any mishaps due to the ice, she didn't tell me. She's careful because she doesn't want to re-injure a previously sprained ankle.

I hope we -- and you, gentle reader -- can all get through this season without accident or injury. Be careful!

The View from My Porch

Another February snow

We had a good five inches of snow at our house during the night. Dennis walked down to the highway this morning about 8 a.m. to check the driving conditions. He watched someone try to drive up the hill east of our mailbox, and he was sliding all over the road. That convinced Dennis that I should call work and tell them I couldn't make it. So I've had an unexpected vacation day.

During the day, the snow melted enough that I could see the sidewalk, but this evening, enough snow fell to cover it again. It's 18° now, and any slush or water on the roads has frozen hard. Also, the weather report says that drifting is possible due to the strong winds, even though the snow is heavy.

There was no school in Christian, Todd, Trigg, or any other nearby county today. Most of them have already cancelled for tomorrow, too. The  National Weather Service reports 7.5 inches of snow at Princeton, 6.5 inches at Dawson Springs, 6 inches at Madisonville, and 5 inches at Hopkinsville.

Some years, the daffodils start blooming in mid-February! However, at about this same time of February, 2008, we had a substantial snow.

Our End-of-January Snowstorm

Just snow, no ice

We received about six inches of snow here last weekend, and we count ourselves lucky. We are happy that we missed out on the ice that storm created as it swept across the Upper South, from New Mexico to Virginia and the Carolinas.

Oklahoma was one of the states that got a lot of ice. 10,000 electric poles may need replacing, and 70,000 homes and businesses didn't have electricity as of February 2.

South Dakota and Iowa had a bad ice storm on January 20-21 that did millions of dollars of damage. They are still cleaning up and trying to get electricity (and in some cases, water) restored.

I have genuine, "been there, done that" empathy for the folks whose lives have been disrupted by ice storms. Some readers will remember that this part of Kentucky was hit by a severe ice storm during the last week of January last year. We don't want to repeat that experience any time soon.

If you'd like to read the saga of our January 2009 ice misfortunes, the Prairie Bluestem articles are listed below. I think you'll see why we're happy with six inches of snow on the one-year anniversary!

• 1/25/09 Ice in the Forecast
• 1/26/09 Ice Storm On the Way
• 1/29/09 The Ice Storm Came
• 2/01/09 Ice Storm Photos
• 2/03/09 Ice Storm Aftermath 
• 2/05/09 Electricity Restored 
• 2/08/09 Ice Storm Cleanup 
• 1/03/10 Closing Out 2009

The Winter of 1948-1949

A long season of deep snow and cold temperatures

I wasn't born until 1951, so I didn't experience the winter of 1948-49, but I've heard stories about it all my life.

My parents, along with my brother Dwight who was a toddler, were living on a ranch some ten miles south of Johnstown, Nebraska. The first major snowstorm hit in November of 1948. More snow followed, but around Christmas, it warmed up a little. My parents were able to get to town in the Jeep for supplies. They didn't get back to town again until sometime in late February.

Earl Monahan's Sandhill Horizons (pp.280-284, published in 1987 by Earl H. Monahan) also notes the break in the weather that allowed them to open the roads and get to town around Christmas. At the holidays, the snow was about a foot deep at the Monahan ranch, out in the Sandhills northeast of Hyannis, NE.

On Sunday, January 2, 1949, the Blizzard of  '49 moved in. By the next morning, the temperature was -4°F. and it was snowing hard with a howling wind that created white-out conditions. The blizzard continued through Monday and Tuesday.

On Wednesday, January 5, the sun finally shone again. There were huge drifts, and the wind was stirring the loose snow into a ground blizzard. The effort to locate and feed the cattle in the deep snow began.

Monahan wrote that when the wind died down, they had a few days of moderate weather. Then the weather went bad again -- starting on January 8th,  frequent snowstorms and extremely cold temperatures prevailed until the wintry assault finally slackened in mid-February. The February 7, 1949, edition of Time magazine reported that Wyoming, Nebraska, and South Dakota had 18 snowstorms in 27 days following the initial blizzard in early January.

The Monahan Ranch owned a TD-9 crawler, and it was a tremendous help in feeding the cattle during those long weeks of deep snow. They were able to plow their way to the herds, but the crawler had to be brought home and kept inside every night so it would start again. (The diesel gelled if it got too cold.)

Credit: Blizzard image from Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

Operation Snowbound and Operation Haylift

Loup County is located in the Sandhills of north-central Nebraska, east of the Monahan Ranch and just south of Rock County where I grew up. My Loup County (NE) centennial book contains the following description of that terrible winter.

The Blizzard of 1949 hit Loup County like a rocket and all was at a standstill. Cars and trucks were immobilized by drifts ten to thirty feet high. In the surrounding countryside, cattle were frozen stiff in standing position. Farmers and ranchers were isolated. When the airports were finally cleared, the Army flew supplies and troops for "Operation Snowbound," a month long program to help suffering familes, ranchers, and farmers. Mom remembers planes dropped food and medical supplies to the Loup County residents that were snowbound in the Sandhills[, s]ome of whom never made it to town until spring.

Source: Story of the J.U. & Delpha Predmore family on page 123, Loup County - Taylor, Neb. Centennial 1993-1983. Published by the Loup County Centennial Committee, no publishing date cited.

When I was a college student in Missouri, I was introduced to a friend's father. Jim Gentry was a heavy equipment operator, who had helped construct the Alaska Highway during World War II. As soon as he heard that I was from Nebraska, he began talking about the Blizzard of 1949.

I don't know the story of how Jim got the job for Operation Snowbound, but in early 1949, he was sent to northeastern Nebraska to drive a snowplow and open the roads to snowbound farms. He worked from dawn to dark every day, and the farm families fed him and gave him a bed, wherever he was. Thirty years later, he still marveled at the experience.

Operation Haylift was carried out by the Army Air Corp. Airmen dropped bales of alfalfa hay out of airplanes to starving herds of sheep and cattle. Many had not been fed for weeks. A terrible number of livestock and wild animals perished from hunger, thirst, exposure, and injury. Some ranchers lost 50% of their herds or even more.

I found several aerial images of the snow-covered prairies in 1949 at the Life photo archive. An image search for "Blizzard of 1949" brings up many interesting snapshots and websites. There's also an excellent video on YouTube: "The Blizzard of 1949: A Nebraska Story".

The entire north-central area of the United States, as far west as Utah, Nevada, and Montana, had a bad winter that year. However, Nebraska was one of the hardest-hit states, and so it has more than its fair share of the snow photographs and stories from the Winter of 1948-1949.

Related articles on Prairie Bluestem:
Blizzard of 1949 Stories
Ready for Winter
Winter Memories
1952 South Dakota Blizzard Story

Blizzard of 1949 in the News

A bad winter remembered

The recent snows and severe cold temperatures have stirred memories of the legendary Blizzard of '49 and the siege of snowstorms that followed it.  Here are three articles that have recently appeared in the news:

The Nebraska blizzard of 1949
Think you've had enough? Area residents recall winter of 1948-49
Living History: Operation Haylift saved Utah cattle

Why I Love Nebraska

Words for the season

Why I Love Nebraska

When it's winter in Nebraska,
And the gentle breezes blow
About seventy miles an hour,
And it's fifty-two below,

You can tell you're in Nebraska,
'Cause the snow's up to your butt;
When you take a breath of winter air
Your nostrils both freeze shut.

The weather here is wonderful,
So I guess I'll hang around;
I could NEVER leave Nebraska--
My feet are frozen to the ground.

(Author unknown)

I saw a scrap of this little ditty posted on Facebook and did an internet search to track it down. I found versions for Christmas and New Year as well as winter. I also found the poem adapted to North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, Wyoming, Montana, Minnesota, Missouri, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Buffalo, New Hampshire, Maine, Alaska, Canada, and Nova Scotia! I didn't find the author's name, though.

I should stop whining about the cold weather we've been having in Kentucky. At least, our temperatures have stayed above zero so far. Here are today's early morning temperatures from Nebraska, according to the National Weather Service. Note that they all start with a minus sign!

Broken Bow: -12° (7:31 am)
Imperial: -12° (7:14 am)
North Platte: -12° (7:45 am)
Valentine: -19° (8:07 am)
Ainsworth: -14° (6:50 am)
Ogallala: -14° (7:10 am)
O'Neill: -13° (6:50 am)
Thedford: -16° (6:50 am)

And the overnight low in Hay Springs, Nebraska: -26°. (Note to Keely and Isaac: Hay Springs is a little town in northwestern Nebraska, a couple towns west of Gordon where my mother grew up and one town east of Chadron where I attended college for a couple of years.)

The bitter cold and the related wind chills put a lot of extra stress on man, beast, and everything mechanical.

First Snow of 2010

And the first snow days of this school year

The rural roads are snow-packed and slick, and the temperatures are very cold, so Christian County Public Schools and many other districts in Kentucky have canceled school for the rest of the week.

The Mennonites resolutely shrug off the weather, be it hot or cold. Their children bicycle to school on days that I wouldn't have sent my own children on such a trip. However, many parents took their youngsters to school with horse and buggy this morning and were waiting outside the schoolhouse to pick them up this afternoon. I saw only two bicycles lying in the school yard, thrown or blown down in the snow. I hope their young owners had a short, safe ride home.

A Really Wrong Forecast

Faulty weather predictions for Winter 2010

Remember the long-range forecasts last fall? This winter in the Midwest was supposed to be warmer than usual, because of one of the Pacific currents. I've forgotten if it was supposed to be La Niña or El Niño.

In a blog poll this fall, Prairie Bluestem readers predicted a cold, snowy winter. Their instincts were more accurate than the predictions of meteorologists.

I read this today:

While predictions of a mild winter prevailed in the fall, meteorologist Joe Bastardi of AccuWeather is now predicting that the United States will have the worst winter in 25 years.

Bastardi reports that the last time severely low temperatures were seen all across the country was in January 1985, when below-zero temperatures struck the country from Chicago east to New York and south to Macon, Ga.

Source: "Midwest Sees Near-Record Lows, Snow By The Foot," an MMX/CBS report published January 5, 2010, by CBS2 of Chicago

I remember January of 1985. I had just found out that I was pregnant with Keely, and I was "morning sick" most of the time. My memories of my queasy stomach are much more vivid than my memories of the cold weather. Maybe there's a lesson to be learned: if I keep my mind busy with something else, the cold temperatures will be easier to endure.

Nebraska Christmas Blizzard

Lots of snow

My friend Sammie who lives near Amelia, Nebraska, sent this photo of snowdrifts near their house. It was taken during the long blizzard that struck over Christmas. Yes, those are the tops of fenceposts. The depth of the snowdrifts in the trees is hard to estimate!

Sammie wrote:

Started with mist, sleet etc Wednesday. Turned to snow and didn't quit snowing or blowing through Saturday... Most of the roads were closed and most people just stayed home. We didn't have electricity from about 10:30 pm Wednesday night until about 3 the next afternoon. And it was off again Thursday night but was on when we got up Christmas [Friday] morning. That was due to the ice and snow on the lines and trees and the wind. Couldn't see past the fence posts across the road to the east. Saturday, the snow had quit blowing quite so bad, but it still wasn't a good day to be out. The drifts had got pretty hard by then. (Source: E-mail, December 27, 2009)

Sammie's remark about the snowdrifts being hard made me remember childhood adventures of walking on top of snow. If the snow was not very hard, every step was a test. At any moment, one leg might suddenly plunge through the crust and sink into the snow. It was great fun when the snow was so hard that we could walk on big drifts.

Deep snow and big snowdrifts are fun for the kids, but they make life miserable for the livestock and for people who work outside. I remember how my parents struggled to feed the cattle during winter storms, and I know that aspect of cattle ranching hasn't changed much. The hard fight to feed the livestock is always the first thing I think of when I hear about blizzards on the Great Plains. And the public servants who work the storms have my respect and concern as well.

Ice Storm Cleanup

Terrible mess of broken branches

Dennis and I spent a couple of days last week hauling branches out of the yard and piling them on the neighbor's field where we will burn them. We managed to clear a portion of the front and side yard, but a daunting amount of work remained to be done.

Saturday morning, a young Mennonite neighbor called Dennis and asked if we could use some help with cleanup. Shortly thereafter, Luke, his aunt, and three of his sisters arrived. With Dennis and me, that made a crew of seven. Dennis and Luke ran the chainsaws and the rest of us gathered branches and stacked them.

They went home at lunch, and when they returned, another brother came along on a Bobcat. Luke stood on the Bobcat's uplifted loader and trimmed some of the higher broken branches with a long-handled chainsaw. He couldn't reach every damaged limb, but he got what he could reach. We were also able to remove the limb from our rooftop, with the help of the Bobcat.

With such a big crew, it was easy to see the progress that we were making. By sunset, we had piled all of the branches from the entire yard. One enormous pile is behind my garden. Another enormous pile is on the old roadbed below the old log house site. There are two more smaller piles in our yard and two piles on the neighbor's field. The birds and rabbits will be happy about all the shelter we've suddenly provided for them.

We thanked our neighbors but it was impossible to really express the gratitude that we feel for their help. It is such a relief to have the mess cleaned up. Next week, I'm going to bake cinnamon rolls for them and take them over with a thank you card.

I don't know what we'll do with all the branch piles. If we try to burn them, we'll have to drag the branches out and burn them a few at a time so we can control the size of the fire.

I read in the Princeton paper that their road departments will haul off storm debris that is piled along state and county roads. If that option becomes available to us in Christian County, we will have to haul the limbs about a quarter of a mile and stack them along the highway.

Electricity Restored

I'm happy to report that our electrical lines have been repaired and we have electricity in our house again. Counting from Tuesday of last week to today (Thursday), we had ten days that were spent at least partly without electricity.

A crew of linemen came to the house last night about 7:00 pm, but decided that our problems were too extensive to fix in the dark. They came back this morning and spent about five hours shoring up the tilted pole and repairing multiple broken lines.

One of the guys was from North Carolina, but the others were from Tennessee. All were employees of the Davis H. Elliott Company.

The Davis H. Elliot Companies, a group of professional construction service providers, specializing in transmission and distribution line construction and repair, commercial and industrial electrical construction, sub-stations, street lighting, traffic signaling, and underground utility locating. (Source)

According to a January 28, 2009, news release, Elliott sent nearly a thousand power line workers to eight states after the ice storm.

They are definitely my heroes today!