Sunday, February 12, 2006

Snowbound

Flashbacks of 1998. That is what was going though my head last night as I was out on top of the carport sweeping off the snow. The span is really too large for any extra weight so after the first 6 inches or so I thought I'd better clean it off. The last time this had to be done was the great snow storm of 1998. Except that time it was M out there at midnight. The trees were crashing and popping by the second. He said every minute or so something would crack and he would run for the house thinking the carport was giving way. Luckily he made it home that evening to take care of the animals and house. I, on the other hand, did not make it home. I had been training my replacement as I was 8 months pregnant with C. We had gone to Kingsport where the snowfall was insignificant. By the time we got back to the greenhouse it was coming down pretty good. I tried to make it home but was turned back on a steep hill as someone had slid off the road. The weather report kept saying it would all turn to rain. I called M at work and told him I'd stay at work (my boss lives on the property) and I would come home the next day. Little did we know it would be three days before I finally made it. M headed home and was the last person to make it into the hollow. A huge tree fell across the road soon after he arrived.

Back at work the transformers were popping and an eerie green glow came from JC. The bosses were crazy busy putting supports up in the greenhouse. The power went out, the phone went out. It was beautiful tho I sure wished I had made it home. Three days later the roads were semi-cleared in town and I was going home. If I had to walk from the highway, by God, I was going home. Luckily, I have wonderful neighbors who owned a business in Elizabethton. They had come to town for an hour or so and I was lucky enough to catch them there. I rode home to their house. Our road was still impassable. So there I am in my street shoes and not much coat headed up the hollow when I see M out skiing! It was so good to be home. It ended up we had about 2 feet of snow. The power was out for 11 days. All in all a great adventure. Its good to see a good snow fall again and I am thankful I was here for it.

2 comments:

Madcap said...

I think building practices and codes must be really different than they are here in Alberta. We're built for snow loads, though it's been a very snow-less year this year. I'm curious about the power-outages - why does that happen? The only long-term outage I've heard of in Canada was in Quebec a couple years ago when they had horrendous ice-storms.

WonderSoul said...

That particular outage was because the snow came down so fast and was so wet the lines just couldn't handle the weight. Amazingly there were places close to downtown who were out of power as long as we were. Ours makes a little more sense as we are towards the end of the line up towards the forest and the NC state line. As for our house being built to handle anything - it was built by two NASA engineers, who I hope were better at their jobs than they were at building houses. There are many weird things we have had to fix due to the engineers rigging.