More on the way...

I had a rather eerie drive last night on the way home. As I drove up the broadway extension through Oklahoma City I realized I couldn't see downtown. There were a few streetlights on, and the big floodlights were on (oddly) over the Bricktown ballpark. But the highrises were all dark. Always over the holidays, the two tallest buildings downtown have big white crosses lit up on their sides, but there was nothing. All of downtown seemed not to exist. A thick blanket of fog added to the creepiness of it.

On a more cheerful note, however, Byron's Liquor Warehouse was back up and running yesterday evening on 23rd street, and the traffic signals were back up, though only blinking red. So there's progress. I mean, where there's a liquor store, there's civilization.

Other good news: the electrician is at our house this morning, reattaching our meter to the wall and getting the power lines up off the ground. OG&E has set up meter drops in parking lots around the metro where electricians can come to pick up new meter boxes for folks. They have them piled up in flats of boxes and they're handing them out like water off the back of the FEMA truck. Our electrician said we were (as we already knew) incredibly lucky to still have power, considering the state of our lines.

And there's more weather on the way. It's pea soup out there this morning, with fog freezing on the trees, and the freezing rain and snow are due some time in the afternoon. They say it won't be anything like what we had, but could really add a new layer of misery to the situation, and of course slow down the power line repairs. I have seen several instances of house fires caused by electrical problems, and a fancy hotel at the Waterford plaza caught fire last night due to electrical shorts, right after Rudy Giuliani's big fundraiser, I guess.

The Oklahoma City superintendent says he doesn't know when schools will reopen. The gym roof on a middle school in Norman collapsed yesterday under the weight of the ice. My folks are keeping Grayson again today. He's very excited about helping Papa Phil clean up the downed trees in their yard today. I guess the thing about boys and power tools starts early. He was jazzed about the prospect of the chain saw.

Here are some pics of the trees in their neighborhood. They lost their beautiful river birch in the front, and an entire Japanese black pine in the back. The other picture is of the flattened pear tree in their neighbor's yard across the street. Those ornamental pear trees just got decimated, everywhere.

The Oklahoman has a nice gallery of storm shots, if you're interested. Go to www.newsok.com and click on Photos. You can choose the "Ice Storm" gallery and look through a bunch of them. I'm going to post some more here after I go out and shoot some in the old neighborhoods in Norman at lunch.

A Tree Holocaust

The city looks like a war zone. Limbs are piled on every street, in every lawn. The tops of trees still standing are broken and splintered, with limbs hanging. Whole trees sprawl, split down the middle and collapsed in every direction.

Everyone is talking about the power outage. "Do you have power?" is the first question you ask or are asked when you meet anyone. The schools are closed through the end of the week, and whole neighborhoods are still dark. You can see the progress of OG&E's doughty repair crews as the traffic lights come on block by block with each passing day, and as businesses come back to life as power is restored in a slow wave across the city.

On the positive side, the outage has once again given Oklahoma a chance to showcase its good people and resilient spirit. The whole state is getting a crash course in four-way-stop etiquette. Busy intersections were previously cut-throat drivers pushed aggressively through yellow lights are now slow, friendly meetings of drivers who meet each other's eyes, wave one another through, nod or raise a hand politely. I hear fewer horns, though everyone is obliged to take longer at each darkened intersection.

Neighbors meet in the front yard as we survey the damage and make mutual offers of assistance in clean-up. This one has a chain-saw, that one has a limb-lopper, a ladder, a pick-up truck. Our neighbor was up early one morning and moved two huge limbs out of our driveway for us before he left for work. Gray was out on Sunday pulling ice-encrusted leaves off sapling trees at the house on the corner to take the weight off of them and keep their trunks from snapping. Later the man who lives there dropped by to thank him.

Our power remains on, though with the lines lying on the ground under a tree limb, that could change at any time. Today Gray said he'll make the call to an electrician friend and ask him to get us on his schedule for putting the electrical meter back on the wall.

Gray and I have not begun any clean-up efforts. There is still a lot of ice and mud, and we had hoped to start the clean-up over the weekend, but now that looks a bit doubtful. Today is supposed to be relatively warm, but this weekend the forecast calls for more rain and then snow, so there's no telling when we'll be able to get out there and work on it.

Ice is still melting on the roof of my car, and when I drive down the highway sometimes big sheets of it fly off the top and crash onto the highway behind me. I feel bad about endangering others, but I'll say this for it...it does discourage tail-gaters.

Gray is home with Grayson today, who, on top of being out of school for the weather, is now coming down with a cold. I feel like we've had a full winter of illness and weather already and it's not even Christmas! We don't normally get anything like this until January.

Later today I'll go get some photographs of the downed trees.

Ice Storm

The word for the week is ICE.
We had an ice storm of epic proportions this weekend, that shut off power to some 400,000 people and has caused a tree holocaust all over the state. Our own neighborhood has suffered huge losses in trees and limbs.

The ice started on Saturday morning, and continued in the form of sleet or freezing rain through Sunday. On Sunday morning we woke to find that half of our pear tree in the back yard had sheared off and dropped over our power and cable lines, miraculously leaving them intact. The power meter box had peeled away from the house and was leaning over, but the lines are still attached. We haven't lost power, or even cable and internet, while houses and whole neighborhood all around us are cut off.

Over the course of Sunday, we lost a big chunk of the live oak in the front yard, as well.

Needless to say, school was out yesterday, and again today. Grayson's in heaven. I'm going a bit nuts. It's raining today and a lot of the city is still without power, so it's not like we've got anywhere to go.

Grayson has made a new friend down the street. His name is Sam, which seems to be the name of about a third of the boys in his elementary school. He's three years older than Grayson, but about his size, and they are both obsessed with Pokemon, so they make a good team. I'm hoping, as is Grayson, that we can have Sam over this afternoon. Sam's power is off. A big limb fell through their power lines. A limb also fell on their car. We're lucky not to have suffered the same fate, with our cars parked out in plain view.

I went out yesterday to buy wine (hey, I have my priorities), and had to peel about an inch-thick sheet of ice off my car in order to do so. I'll say this for it, it is beautiful. Check out this groovy ice sculpture it made of our bushes out front. And the lovely ice-coated little tree. I'm surprised some of these smaller trees can stand up under the weight. It's the trees that still have leaves on them that have gotten the worst of it, though. All the extra weight.

The rain seems to be clearing some of the ice, but we will have major clean-up to do once things dry out a bit.