Well, yesterday's windstorm has come and gone. Rather to our surprise, we only lost power for about eight hours.
Don was listening to the radio drama on the sheriff's scanner, and let me tell you, there was mayhem all over the region. Every law enforcement officer, emergency response personnel, and power company lineman was on duty, trying to keep ahead of the chaos. There were trees and power lines down everywhere. Many roads were additionally blocked by falling rocks.
"Well, it's a good time for a little day drinking," joked Older Daughter at 7:45 am, putting a dollop of Irish cream in her hot chocolate.
The wind was positively insane. We expected trees down all over the place, but the only damage we noticed on our property was a tree toppled over in our tiny grove of black hawthorn.
The same couldn't be said for a neighbor, who had a massive pine come down just behind his pickup truck, blocking him in. Miraculously his vehicle escaped all but minor scratches, but he said it took him four hours to chainsaw up the tree enough to clear the blockage.
During the day, when Older Daughter's side of the house was getting chilly, she opened the connecting door and let Frumpkin into the main part of the house, where the woodstove kept things cozy. Darcy – who hates cats – understands this is one cat towards whom he must be respectful. He's a Good Boi, is Darcy.
Frumpkin was very curious about the Christmas tree.
Even though the wind was still shrieking, somehow the hard-working linemen managed to get our power back on by mid-afternoon.
Our pastor called in the evening to check in on us. Even though he and his family are at a higher elevation and had stronger winds, their power had stayed on and they were fine. However he told us an older couple in our church had part of their roof torn off. Another family had something like 40+ trees come down on their property, taking out most of the fences and causing them to scramble to contain livestock. They're still without power and are staying with our pastor for a few days.
Don and I told our pastor we're available to help re-shingle roofs or re-string fences as necessary. At this point everyone is still assessing damage, so we'll find out more in the next couple of days.
We have snow and rain moving in today and tomorrow, with wind (not as strong) predicted for tonight. You can see some snow flurries in front of the mountains below.
I guess it's winter.
