The Ice Storm of '98

Last Saturday, January 5th, was the 10th anniversary of the start of the Ice Storm of ’98.

While we had a big thaw in Eastern Ontario this week, we did not get any freezing rain, just large amounts of snow-melting rain.

One of these days, I will scan the photos I took at the house after the Ice Storm of all the damage to the trees and the front porch. In the meantime you can read about the storm and see some images from the following links:

Environment Canada
http://www.msc-smc.ec.gc.ca/media/icestorm98/index_e.cfm

Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_ice_storm_of_1998
CBC
http://archives.cbc.ca/IDD-1-70-258/disasters_tragedies/ice_storm/

The trees, oh, the trees!

“The way of the Wind is a strange, wild way.”

Ingram Crocker

I had a few frantic moments this week worrying about the house.

On Wednesday, January 9th a major windstorm blew through Ontario as the warm front that gave us weather 5-10° C above freezing for most of the week, clashed with a cold front coming in from the west.

In Prescott, two roofs were stripped off heritage buildings in the downtown core, while on the Johnstown-Ogdensburg bridge to the U.S. (or perhaps the Odgensburg – Johnstown Bridge to Canada?), an empty tractor trailer crossing the bridge was blown over, crushing a section of railing and knocking a light standard into the St. Lawrence below.

The story actually made the CBC, the Ottawa Citizen and the A-Channel news:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/01/09/weather-ontario.html

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/storyimage.html?id=60c8a376-27b5-4e6b-a453-eda1cb57e0c0&img=f74f2784-77b8-43f7-ac4b-78f94b62c661&path=/ottawacitizen/news/

In Ottawa, the winds picked up sharply around 8 A.M., blowing the paper and cardboard recycling all around the neighbourhood making a general mess everywhere. I came home to find roof shingles on the front lawn and driveway, but that is another story.

After seeing the news stories, I had visions of the wind knocking down some more Manitoba maples around the property or possibly the big pine on the front of the house and possibly the worse-for-wear brick chimney over the summer kitchen.

Saturday morning saw me driving down to the house with a great deal of trepidation, wondering how I would deal with the wrath of this windstorm. That is, how much would the tree service cost this time? Fortunately as I drove by the house on the highway, not a single tree was down or damaged. As I pulled into the driveway, I let out a big sigh of relief. There were a lot of small branches on the lawn and the pine tree lost a huge amount of needles yet again. Most surprising was that there is almost no snow left from December’s record setting snows.