Sunday, January 30, 2011

Just How Cold Has It Been?

Last Wednesday we were hit with a huge snow and ice storm, and it hasn't been warm enough since then for any of the snow or ice to melt away. Melt, yes - enough to create some pretty spectacular icicles - but not warm enough for them to go away.

We had Andrew's birthday lunch at his parents' house yesterday, and I snapped these pictures on some of the bushes outside my in-laws' house.

The poor camellia - this was the first one I saw, and it prodded me to take pictures of some of the others. It looks like it has hands made of icicles.

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This azalea caught my eye by how the diagonal branch has an elongated formation - I imagine the branch is under a lot of stress with the weight of the ice.

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This is the same bush - but looks like it has some daggers hanging from it:

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This azalea also has a thick band of ice - not dagger-like, hanging off its main stem. If you look in the lower left hand corner you can see some icicles that are sticking out horizontally rather than vertically:

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Here is a close up:

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This one really confused me at first, but Andrew figured out what must have happened. The icicles were vertical at one point, but the weight of the ice on the branch caused the branch to bend, and then it froze in that position, making the icicles horizontal.

Willow has been home with me since Wednesday as well - Andrew tried to take her to school Wednesday morning. He slid 12 feet into the first intersection on the main road, turned around, dropped her back off at home home and said she was staying home with me. The school district ended up calling a short day and yanking the kids at 1pm, then calling snow days on Thursday and Friday due to the road conditions.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I can see how the horizontal ones happened but it is the first time I have ever actually seen one. Interesting.

kingshearte said...

Yikes. That looks like when we had our big ice storm up here some years back. Be careful when you're out. When that ice comes down, it can be pretty vicious.

I don't know if there's any way of gently de-icing trees, either, but I do know that the ice caused a lot of damage to our trees. I hope yours melts soon enough to not be quite so hard on the trees.