Storm Of The Decade

 A cold front was due to blast through the northeast yesterday afternoon, and although thunderstorms were a possibility, we never expected the squall line that hit us. We heard later that the storm was moving at a whopping 105 mph, although our winds weren't quite that high. We had wind from every direction, along with hail, rain, thunder and lightning. I heard a big thump and actually felt it through the floor, before we discovered a huge tree had fallen in our back yard. Luckily it didn't hit anything.

When the storm eased a bit, Dave looked up the street to see two trees had fallen across the road blocking traffic. He jumped on the New Holland and pushed them off to the side. Our neighbor sure was thankful and felt so bad that his tree fell that way.

Then someone in a car told him there was another tree down the road, but when he got there, it was too big to move. About an hour later, a tree service and the fire department came to remove it. 

Our neighbors' yards (the man was trying to cut the branches with a hatchet)...

The motorcycle shop's driveway was the easiest to clean up.

Today we worked on clearing the big tree in the yard with the chainsaw, New Holland, and its chipper.  I started cleaning up the trails in the woods too, but the chainsaw is definitely needed back there. We did find out why the tree broke in half and fell in the yard. It was old and compromised more than we first thought.

Our power has been out for 24 hours and we found out that it is off over quite a bit of the capital district with so many trees and lines down. Our electric company said that it hasn't been this bad since Hurricane Irene in 2011. We do have a gas generator that we run every few hours, except overnight we leave it off. When running it keeps the heat on, the water pumped up from the well, and the food in the fridge and freezer cold. We just now received an email from National Grid saying our power has been restored, but it hasn't! Hopefully we won't be one of the unfortunate people that may not get their power until Monday.