magickcanoe.com Blog

Lucky? What could be so lucky about having many of your birch trees bent over until they look more like croquet hoops??? (click on image for larger view)

I say “lucky” because it could have been worse…. much worse.

While Friday night’s ice storm may have done some damage to the birch, it looks like most of the other trees have escaped relatively unscathed — unlike what transpired in the ice storm of January 1998. That time, we lost a terrific number of trees here at the farm and throughout the region. Although most trees escaped total destruction, their upper branches were often severely damaged. In autumn, after the leaves fall, the extent of that damage is still quite apparent, as is the lingering poor health of many of the more seriously damaged trees in the forests.

Friday’s ice storm began with a light freezing rain early in the afternoon. By around 3 p.m., the trees were beginning to ice up and bend slightly. By 4 p.m., the ice had built up to a coating of about a centimeter or so thick on branches. I opened one of the windows to shoot a couple of photos and could hear unpleasantly familiar CRACK of trees breaking in the forest next to the house. In January ‘98, that sound went on non-stop for almost 48 hours. It was one of the most dreadful sounds I’ve ever heard.

Luckily, this time ’round, we didn’t lose our electricity, although a large area nearby did lose power from Friday afternoon through to some time Saturday morning. Between the rain and the ice that fell, the already high water levels of the local creeks are swelling higher, and we saw some flooding into farm fields yesterday — an unusual sight for this time of the year.

This weekend, I’ve noticed a couple of stories in the news about how a moderate El Niño is expected to remain in force through the next few months. I can’t help but think of the parallels to the January ‘98 ice storm as it occurred while an El Niño was underway (just for comparison, here’s the El Niño forecast map for Dec 06, Jan/Feb 07).

I hope we won’t see further ice storms, but we’re not betting on good weather for this winter. Instead, we’re preparing for a worst case scenario. Last time, we lost our electricity for 10 days and couldn’t leave our farm for the first couple of days as there were so many hydro poles and lines knocked down and littering the roads (miles of lines brought down by the heavy ice). Fortunately, our food cupboards and candle supplies were well stocked, and we have a wood stove that can do a modest job of heating the house. We managed to get an old hand pump in an orchard out in one of our fields working, so that supplied water for us and our farm animals. What we didn’t count on last time was that our basement would be flooded by the heavy rains that fell at the outset of the ice storm, and that coincided with the black-out that shut down our sump pump. That created a big mess and, as our wood stove is in the basement, we had to put on rubber boots to wade through the water to keep refilled the stove with wood — not much fun. By the way, if you’re interested in reading some accounts of the 97-98 ice storm, Dave Brown’s Ice Storm Diary is especially good. Ken Watson’s Ice Storm ‘98 webpage also provides some good background info and photographs.

Now we have an emergency back-up bilge-pump out of a boat that can be powered off of our car battery. We don’t have a generator, but we do have a large storage battery unit for emergency power, and a propane cook stove and full tank of propane. Also plenty of candles and flashlights. Hopefully we won’t have a need for all of this stuff, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared for the worst.

Tags: Ice storm of ‘98, El Nino