Ice Storm

This has been the weirdest winter/spring that I can recall.  Winter was fairly average but we'd get snow, then it would mostly melt before we'd get snow again.  As we head into spring, though, things are just bizarre.  The weather is warm for a few days, then it gets bitterly cold, then it rains, then it snows, and last night we had a huge ice storm.  Now this is coming in on the heels of several days of rain so we have huge areas of standing water in our back yard that are now freezing over.  When you now add the massive amount of branches and sticks that have fallen off the trees as a result of the ice, everything is just a mess.  Plus, there are still piles of snow scattered about.

The power went out just before 5 this morning but our gas fireplace still worked so I turned it on to keep the living room fairly warm and sat near it reading a book until the power came back on around noon.  The internet was out for a few more hours after that.

I was positive that we were going to lose our birch trees.  The one in front was so heavily laden with ice that it was almost in my office window and did, in fact, scrape the roof when the wind started blowing.  The one next to the driveway lost a ton of branches and, when the city came out to clear things on the power lines, they cut off a few more of the branches.  Not sure what the tree will look like this summer!