Ice in Paducah - January 27

The rain and sleet started last night. By 5 a.m., our power was out. Guess we were one of the first to call because the power company was here by shortly after 6 a.m. As we sat here in the house with no appliances running and no noise, we could hear the branches of trees breaking and falling to the ground. That was just the beginning. By 7:30 our power was restored. But the limbs have continued to fall. Here are some photos of our yard that looks like a war zone.

This is a major storm - last night the media called it the worst storm in two decades.

We only live about a mile or so from the office and Wayne took me to work this morning. All day long we could hear trees cracking in the woods near the office. Our power flickered on and off most of the day. Oh, did I say that I was the only member of our quilt show staff who made it in. I fielded calls for registrations most of the day. Then the power went out at about 3 p.m., so I came home. Guess the cell towers are iced over too because I had no bars on my cell phone and we were having trouble making outside calls with our office phones. Billy was finally able to get a call to Wayne to come get me. When I got home I grabbed my camera and shot some photos in our yard. You can get a larger view by clicking on the photos.

Even as I sit here typing, I can hear more limbs falling in our yard. Wow, there was a big tree that just crashed to the ground in the woods by our next door neighbor. And we have more sleet and snow to come yet tonight. This isn't supposed to end until about noon on Wednesday. More damage is on the way.

We are okay and have power for now.

We have a whole grove of trees along our left property line. Many, many branches have fallen from these trees. They just can't stand the weight of all that ice. It must be at least 1/2 inch thick. As pretty as the ice looks, we will have a big mess to clean up.

See how the trees have broken and fallen over into the neighbor's yard. It doesn't look like it damaged the fence, but now we've lost all four of the big pine trees that separated our yards.

This view from our back porch shows one pine

trees that has its limbs dragging clear to the ground, the next one is broken off at the roots and flopped our neighbor's fence, and smaller limbs that damaged our gutters on the back of the house.

This is the view of the back yard from our porch. Limbs are continuing to fall. I don't ever remember seeing icicles like this on our clothesline since we moved to Kentucky.

Cardinals

We feed the birds all year long, so have a lot of wintering cardinals that hang out in our back yard. The cardinals love to sit in the wisteria bush. All of those curves of the branches give them some protection, and they look beautiful against the icy branches.