Warm, Cold, Warm Again

It has been a while since I have written, but maybe this post will explain. The end of November brought some lovely weather and we did as much as we could in the yard to clean up leaves, mulch the perennials and bulbs, and enjoy the birds. On Tuesday, November 28, the campus, and then our neighborhood was visited by a huge flock of migrating Robins. The weather service had been warning us for a week about a winter storm that would hit around the 29th or 30th, so when I saw about 200 Robins stripping the red fruit off the ornamental trees outside the gym where I exercise, I figured a weather change was near. On Wednesday the 29th, we had a high of 75 degrees. A wind blew away the plastic birdbath and this robin perched on the rim, looking at us as if to ask what we had done with his swimming pool.

Early Thursday morning, the bottom fell out of the atmosphere and everything headed South. We woke to freezing rain, which turned to sleet, which turned back to freezing rain. Norm went to volunteer at the food pantry, I went to exercise and got my hair cut, and by 2 p.m. the ground was showing white. We listened with foreboding as weather cast after weather cast warned of heavy ice accumulating on power lines and tree limbs, and possible power failures. We had gathered provisions and spare batteries, but that wouldn't be enough. On Thursday night about 11 p.m. I was checking my email when everything went dark. Our power was off, and so was our heat, since the gas boiler for our hot water system has electronic ignition and thermostat and pump. We went to bed and listened to the sleet hitting the awnings. The whole neighborhood was dark, and quiet. We awoke to a house that was at 59 degrees and falling, and to a world outside that was 22 degrees and glittering. This view (above) across our neighbor's back yard told the story.
Even on Saturday morning, after a low of 11 degrees, the house was holding at 48 degrees inside. Outside, the world was still a Winter Wonderland. The drive beside the Normandie Golf Course was striking in its stark beauty. This frigid view is from the entrance to Bel Nor from Greendale, looking south. As you can see, street crews had been busy. The only positive thing about this storm is that we didn't get the 8 to 10 inches of snow originally forecast...the bad news was, most of that moisture came down as rain and froze instead.

We had no idea how cold the house could get with no heat, and we didn't want to test it out, so we accepted an invitation from church friends to stay with them starting on Friday night. We made daily trips to our house to see how the temperature was holding; we didn't want to drain the heating system and the pipes unless we absolutely had to!

Jan and Larry Krueger's home on Flora Place became our home away from home for the next few days.



One of their two cats, Coal, developed an affinity for us. So did their calico cat, Sneakers, but she was too shy to be captured on camera.

The power returned late on Saturday afternoon. We moved back home after church on Sunday (the Kruegers live just a few blocks from Compton Heights) and found a warming house. Although we were cozy, comfortable and grateful at the Kruegers', our own bed felt so wonderful. At the height of the outage, 515,000 customers of our utility were without power. Tonight, Monday Dec. 4, 180,000 are still out, despite the help of 7000 electrical line crewpeople from 14 different states who have poured in to help. It's supposed to reach 45 degrees on Tuesday and Wednesday before we get another cold front. We pray the crews will be successful in getting everyone back on line, and that they will all be safe.