More Ice

Last night we had another ice storm. No power outages for us, but a number of limbs have broken off in the neighborhood. One fell off the neighbor's maple tree landed in our backyard. About 7:20 this morning we heard something that sounded like thunder and which shook the house a little bit. I went outside and this is what I saw, annotated to show where the limb broke off and where it landed. Thankfully, no visible damage to the house.

Alas, the redbud in the front yard lost a major limb--which rested partially on the two cars. However, because of our foresight in covering the cars with tarps, and just the way it happened to fall, no damage to the cars.

Examining the redbud, it was evident that the limb that fell had already been eaten through most of the way by some kind of rot, and there was actually very little that had to break for it to come down. In the picture, below, the only parts that actually broke were the thin lines of the lightest wood. The dark stuff was all rot that was exposed when the limb fell away. Perhaps ice storms are a part of nature's pruning process. Too bad they take down power lines in the process.

Today we had occasion to visit both the temple and the Rockwood chapel. No power at either location. The temple has emergency generators that kick in, so things were working there quite well, except the lights were flickering and not as bright as we are used to. The reception in our building went on in spite of the outage. Someone brought a generator, ran a line through a window to some floodlights in the cutural hall, and the event went on--minus any sound system or lights in the kitchen, hallways, or restrooms. All in all, people had a good time, and did a lot of talking and eating.