The Great Snowstorm of 2010

I am one of “those” people.  Yup!  The ones who LOVE the snow, who can’t WAIT for it to start falling and falling and falling some more!!  I get pretty disappointed when we have lame snow years.  I was thinking that this year was turning out to be a lame one.  Half way through November, and only one weak-sauce storm!?!  This was not good!  So last Saturday night, when the snow started falling, I got a little giddy.  I never suspected it was going to be the craziest snow storm we have had in YEARS!  (I am referring to the pre-“epic” snowstorm by the way!)

I had the pleasure of driving through it with my momma, and at one point, cars were pulling over because you couldn’t see ANYTHING except for horizontal snow!!  It felt like we were on a ride at an amusement park and were going “warp speed”.  I’m glad my mom has mad “snow-driving” skills, so we were able to make it home safely. 

So, warm in my house, I went to sleep with visions of wonderful snowman building in our near future.  At some point in the night, Jason and I were both startled awake.  In our groggy state, we thought some branches had just been blown into the side of our house or something.  Nothing to worry about, go back to bed.  Then around 5:30, our girls woke up and told us our tramp was broken.  We were a little late getting it taken down this year, so I figured they were just seeing the piles of snow on it.  I peeked out my window, and it looked mostly ok.  Some of the branches of our tree had fallen into the net and made it “skee-wampuss” but it was fine.  I didn’t have my glasses or contacts, and I could tell something else was a little odd about our backyard.  I looked closely and saw this:

I looked like the heavy snow must have torn some of our branches down.  Jason and I went out to inspect.  The branches of our GI-NORMOUS tree were all touching the ground!  Wow! 

Then we saw what was really going on.  CRACK!!  Our huge tree had split in TWO!  We couldn’t believe our eyes! 

 

The snow was still coming down so we tried to assess the damage as much as we could.

Once it was lighter, we could see just how miraculous our fallen tree was.  If you have been to our home, you can understand how BIG the tree was.  We had shade in pretty much our entire backyard almost all day long.  The tree is only about 10 feet from our back porch.  It broke the other direction where there was nothing for it to fall into except the fence. 

This awesome sturdy fence broke the tree’s fall, but only knocked one section out about a foot. 

The tree then missed our back fence neighbors’ awning by mere feet.

The previous owner had some posts with metal rods in the garden for their “climbing” plants.  We have meant to take these out since we moved in, but haven’t.  We think the metal and posts helped to break the tree’s fall so it didn’t knock more of the fence out or down.  (you can see one of the post/rod things in this picture)

 

We didn’t feel comfortable just leaving the tree until later because more branches continued to snap under the weight of the snow, so as early as we felt like we could call on a Sunday morning, we called our families and asked for some help taking care of the tree.

We got the section that was on the fence off and chopped up.  It is a crazy sight to see that big pile of branches and logs!

We will be working to get the rest of the tree down as soon as we can.  It’s pretty sad looking right now.  We are grateful to our dad’s and my brother Dave for coming to our rescue. 

We are so thankful for our little miracle!