Guess what? I had all of my fall tree trimming, removal and root ball digging all done and then we had an ice storm. I am sitting in the dining room with the parakeet warming in the sun with the cat on the window sill watching the bird

There is not a tree in 60 acres that wan not damaged. Many had major limbs broken with most hitting the ground but some hanging by a thread in the tree. Most can be pulled out of the trees where they fell and then pushed in a pile to burn. Others have the whole tree down with the root ball halfway out of the ground. I will post pics once we have power to download them. I am typing on a blackberry with big fingers on a little keyboard
Last nite the outside temp was 17 and it got down to 53 in the house

We fired up the 155000 btu salamander and it was back up to 63 in about 90 mins. We live about an hour out of st louis month and there about 500,000 customers without power

Ill take pics of the clean up when we get conditions good enough to try

We had a bad storm here on Fri. in N.E. Pa. but only lasted for about 1/2 hour but very high winds and a tornado wind storm hit up in a higher mountain region & blew the windows out of a large food market & cut many customers in the store.It even blew the hanging ceiling blocks out of their metal supports so the store is closed till further notice.Also blew part of the roof off a high school gym near the store & trees are blowed down all over up in that area for a few miles around.After about the half hour of lightening & rain & wind the sky cleared immediatly, never seen anything like it, clearing so fast.It hit a high of 71 yesterday & broke a record by 10 degrees for the day & dropped down to more nomal today in the 30s & sunny.

Storm was amazing here in Cincinnati. We had about 2.0 inches of rain foreshadowed by 60 mph wind gusts. Right after the rain went thru the sun came out and it was a nice remainder of the afternoon. Weather is absolutely freakish these days.

Al

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The electric co-op did it's job well and we are back on line again. No more running outide in the 14 deg F to get milk for your cheerios or eating by a coleman lantern.

I'll post some tree down pics in the next day or so.

Hey for what it's worth, our propane fired furnace only requires about 3 amps to run (110 volts) and was easily abale to be run by a small generator I had for doing small jobs away from the house. If anybody ever loses power it's about a 5 minute job to wire the furnace to run off of an extension chord from the generator.

I have a few pics I will try to load. Yes, they are pretty but they sure made a mess that needs to be pushed in a pile and burned. I am concerned about the big limbs that have broken but have not fallen out of the tree yet or are hanging by a thread. I hope they melt and then the wind blows hard and blows them out of the tree!

The 2nd pic is of my son enjoying the ice on a 4 wheeler. He's pretty good at it and hopes it never melts.

Just a note of caution when you go to pushing on those tree limbs----make sure you've got some canopy/brush guard protection for the operator. Be careful---you can get hurt before you realize it.

We had a huge ice storm here in Mississippi Delta in '94 I believe----power was out for up to two weeks in places. Still have trees dieing off from damages recieved over 10 years ago----in talking to knowledgable forresters, there is not much to do about it. Its just natures way of natural pruning.

Good luck with your clean up. (no ice this far down---still feeling cold temps)

Delta Dirt

Hi delta dirt
I am with you on having a heavy brush cab. The good news is that the d4 has the HD Fleco cab. I really don't even like walking around among the trees as many large limbs are hanging there waiting to drop on somebody. If the tree has lots of damage I plan on taking the whole tree down to avoid the falling limbs. The tough part of this is watching where things could fall when you drop the tree. What I have done in the past is put a chain as high in the tree as you can get it (the chain is about 60 feet long) then I gently pull with a front end loader to get it slowly leaning. Then I quit cutting and stand clear while we slowly give it a light tug to the ground. I will send picks of this event when we find weather good enough to do the cleanup. Have a good holiday season

You're right, sure is pretty. Man I hope we never get one like that. Ice and cedar trees are about like tornados and trailer parks.