An Iowa Garden

Hasn't this been a bugger? At 4:00 yesterday the rain came pounding down followed shortly by the snow. It snowed all night and is still snowing now. When I looked at my Desktop Wether it shows snow every day next week! The seasons have been all screwed up this year. You got a good photo there.
 

Hello Don;

Your picture reminded me of January 1998 in Vermont when an incredible ice storm hit the state, crippling power and freezing people and homes for several weeks in places. The Vermont Agency of Natural Resources has a little site from back then
http://www.anr.state.vt.us/Env99/icestorm.html which gves a summary.

To this day if you drive over the "gaps" as they are called here--where the highways go kind of east-west over the tall mountains that parallel the Green Mountain range and the north-south Champlain Valley along the western side of the state--Brandon Gap, Lincoln Gap, Middlebury Gap/Breadloaf Mountain--if you stop at the top of any of these and look down you can still see the ice storm destruction from back then.

We were seriously concerned about the sugar maples statewide as this storm affected 700,000 acres. Maple syrup production in Vermont is an important piece of our economy.Although the trees were really beaten up so badly I thought they might "bleed" to death come spring, they recovered. The amount of dead wood which remains in the forests is of great concern, however, because if a fire every started, control would be about impossible.

Oddly, we were surrounded by the storm here at 1500 feet but if you traveled just 200 feet down the hill in any direction, the devestation began. The preceeding fall the power company had hired a crew to trim the lines around here and my wife fed the guys well with apple pies, carrot cakes and such to keep them here doing a better job. Barter is a good thing.

Walk carefully. Ice has no hold until you are on the ground "holding" it.

George Africa
http://thevermontgardener.blogspot.com
 

Don, I wholeheartedly agree! I know winter serves its purpose, but ice storms? I'm just not sure what purpose they serve. But I hope you guys are digging out today, and at least we're not getting the snow that was forecast to fall all day today, too!
 

Sally... we lost a TON of big limbs from the ice.
George... the only thing that saved us from catastrophe this time was that we didn't get the 10" of wet heavy snow on top of the ice that they had predicted.
Genie... It actually warmed up enough to melt some of the ice today.
Don