Odd O'blography

Ill Wind

Ill Wind

An easterly, like wicked wolf,
howls ill through shredded wood.
Its gusting swirl runs widdershins,
brings no one any good.

Our Pacific Northwest storm has been more adventure than anyone would ever want. The weatherman called it a bomb cyclone and that's what our yard looks like. We were without electricity from Tuesday afternoon through Sunday evening. We lost two mature firs, a small fir and a small maple tree. One of the big firs smashed through a large maple and another fir on its way to the street. It landed on the power line and snapped off the pole in front of our house. Our driveway was completely blocked with the debris from those three trees and the power lines were underneath.

The weather turned nice for the next two days and I got the roof cleaned off and cleared a sort-of path through the debris to get the car out. It was probably a bad idea, but other cars were driving over the electric wires, so I did too. Our house has minimal damage, but others weren’t so lucky. Our other big fir fell onto the next-door neighbor’s roof. They had a large fir that smashed through the roof of the next house, and the third house over also has a tree completely through the roof. A house on the street below us has its entire front smashed up and their car is under the tree in front of the garage doors. Several houses in our area are currently condemned and uninhabitable, but thankfully, no one we know of got hurt.

I bought a small generator a few years ago, so we had power for the fridge, a lamp, and a TV (with rabbit ears) in the kitchen. I also kept a fire going in the fireplace and put a personal space heater under the kitchen table. The front room stayed near 60 degrees, but the bedrooms dropped to 50, so we slept in our recliners at night. Heroic power company crews came from Oregon, western Washington, and British Columbia. They replaced our pole and hooked us up again on Sunday. The cable line went down with the power pole, but cell phones are keeping us online. I’m using the hotspot feature to connect my laptop. Comcast won’t be here until next week. My biggest issue was that I had to run an extension cord to my powered recliner. First world problems, I guess.