It's officially the worst ice storm in Oklahoma history in terms of power outages. The last report I heard was over 500,000 customers were without electricity (that's just customers, not people).
Our power went out Sunday evening. It was cold, but not too cold for sleeping (55ish). But at around 2am Angie and I were jarred awake by a huge crack and a boom as the large tree in our backyard dropped one of it's branches on our roof directly above our bedroom.
As I crunched around our yard attempting to inspect the damage in the middle of the night I was struck by how quiet it was and how dark it was. You don't realize how noisy it actually is in the city until everything electric is silenced and when those are gone it also becomes quite dark as well! The house looked to be in safe enough condition, so I went back to bed, but a few hours more of heart-stopping thuds on the roof as ice and branches continued to fall drove our family to hit the road before 7am to go to the warmth and safety of grandma's house.
The warmth was not to be, however, since her power went out not long after we arrived and got settled. But even though the temperature dropped significantly, the gas fireplace and stove took the edge off the chill and made dinner by candlelight enjoyable with the family. A few roudy games of Uno with the grandparents and the kids and we hit the bed early, snuggling up on an inflatable bed in front of the fire.
Around 10pm the power came back on (it was instantly obvious since we were all in bed and every light in the room came to life).
Although the power to our house has not been restored and we have a LOT of work to do to clear branches in the yard (as well as a now-ridiculous wait to get any tree removal services to return calls), we are very grateful to God and our family for a warm and safe place to stay during this storm.
The power at the church as well as local schools are still out so none of us can go to work yet. I am fairly sure that many of the Destiny staff members will not last much longer with cabin fever before we start showing up with candles looking for something to do...
Here are some more pictures I took over the last 24 hours...
My front yard looks like a battle zone with Silver Maple branches and limbs all over the place. As of this morning, no roof damage but some scary moments late yesterday afternoon as a big limb crashed on my driveway 10' in front of me. Then in the early evening another limb "slapped" my roof. Stay safe!
Posted by: Karen Provenzano | December 11, 2007 at 01:25 PM