So you're probably wondering just what happened to me as a result of the freak snowstorm that hit the northeastern United States October 29. Ughh, where do I begin?
A couple of days before the "October Surprise" shocked us Northeasterners, it was expected to be a typical October snowfall (not unheard of in this part of America), a light coating to a couple of inches with some rain mixed in. No big deal. A winter weather advisory was issued for the part of New Jersey that I live in. Nothing as devastating as, say, a hurricane. At one point, in fact, this storm was supposed to miss us altogether.
It all turned out very differently. What happened was that the rain changed to snow earlier than expected and the snow came down harder than expected. The weather advisory for my area was upgraded to a storm warning at virtually the last minute. Some parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania got warnings without the customary watches preceding them. Cold air was funneled in from Canada at the very moment the storm, having formed off the coast of North Carolina from different rain bands, began racing up the coast. Once the snow did start falling, it weighed down the branches and limbs of trees, many of which still had their leaves and thus could not take the strain of the heavy white stuff. My house briefly lost electricity twice before it went off a third time . . . and stayed off for three days. The cable service briefly went out once, then again for just as long.
Because this storm took everyone by surprise - unlike Hurricane Irene, which everyone expected - few people in the greater New York area prepared for it. For Hurricane Irene, I stocked up on batteries, put everything outside (lawn chairs, hoses, et al.) away, and made lots and lots of ice. This time, I was only able to buy enough batteries for my portable radio and quickly compose drafts for my blogs that I could still post from a PC at the local library later in case I lost power at home. But the more important preparations - getting ice for perishable food and the like - proved to be impossible given the short notice we had about the storm's intensity.
One thing I did manage to do the day before the storm hit was remove some tree branches from the overhead wires connected to my house and clear a few branches from another tree (both red maples, by coincidence) growing into the main wires along the street. Removing the branches over my wires prevented them from being brought down, which would have meant my mother and I might have been without power longer. But removing branches growing into the main wires was a useless gesture. No branches from our property collapsed onto the main wires, but a limb from our neighbor's oak did . . . and it took down most of the wires plus the insulator supporting the top wire. It wasn't until the wires were re-attached the Tuesday after the storm (November 1) that my mother and I got our electricity and our cable service. In between losing and regaining both services, we had to deal without heat at night, conserve what little hot water was left (I had to shower in the local community center at least once), and make calls on our cell phones. My mother and I constantly checked the hourly outage reports on WCBS-AM, the local news station, and as we heard the number of outages in our service area drop, we got increasingly annoyed that we were still in that number.
Wednesday went along without incident, but the power went off again for three hours on Thursday morning. So, after returning from the library, I went out and bought some ice. I got home and opened the door to bring the ice in, and the power was still off. I went back to the car, I got the ice, and when I went back in the house, the power was back on. It was that kind of week.
Anyway, I'm glad that's all over. But there's still a lot of damage to the trees in my neighborhood and everywhere else. So many treetops and limbs got destroyed that the area looks like Hiroshima after the bomb. Halloween celebrations on Monday had to be cut back or postponed all together, most trick-or-treaters going out the following Friday. The streets and avenues are littered with so much debris everywhere, and the cleanup (which started in my town today, fortunately on my street first) could take weeks. It could take until April or May in most towns to inspect the trees that bore the brunt of the storm to check for additional damage. I myself spent several days afterward cleaning up the mess around my house, which was light in comparison to what our neighbors had to deal with. Our biggest problem was a tree from a vacant wooded lot owned by the township we live in that cracked in two and collapsed into our back yard. The remains of it are still there, and the township says we're responsible for the part of the tree that fell on our property (i.e., most of it).
But at least the all of the snow has pretty much melted. :-D Now we can get back to autumn. And I hope the only things that fall from the trees from here on are the leaves.
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