October 29 Snowstorm

A complete disaster, one of the worst storms in Connecticut history.

We got two feet of wet heavy snow, wires snapped, electricity shut down and we were without power for 7 full days.  Temperatures were in the 20s overnight and in the 50s in the daytime.

The house stayed at 50 degrees.  Very cold, very uncomfortable and very dark at night.  I showered one day at the emergency center in town at the middle school.  One day I showered at Milano's in the spa room.  We hunkered in the dark and went to bed at 7 p.m. every night, or earlier.  It was awful.

Power came on yesterday, November 5, and I am so grateful.  Half of the town and over half of Simsbury, Avon, Farmington and W. Hartford are still out.

Inventory of lost trees:
Most of the back hill maples are topped, snapped off midway.  The tuliptree (I just took pictures of how lush and big it had gotten!) keeled over and uprooted itself.  One sweetgum, so lovely, and growing so well from that little 2 gal. pot I got from Home Depot, has snapped off a foot above the ground.  All the silver maples have self destructed.

In the yard the Oklahoma redbud split in two and is gone; we cleared the branches out and nothing but a stump is left.

The Okame cherry is snapped off, only a foot of bare trunk left.

The new Forest Pansy redbud snapped off about 18 inches above the ground.

The witch hazels spit in two and are quite deformed. but may live.  The largest Tardiva hydrangea is completely without branches, but you can prune them severely to the ground and they regrow, I think.

The katsura tree has almost no leaves now, maybe three spindly branches left.

The pear tree split apart, and all three of Gwen's did too, as well as all three of her cherry trees on our side.  In fact, all over town and all down Day Hill Road the pear trees imploded.  Here's a picture of one on Deerfield, they all pretty much look like this:

The big maples in the yard are very deformed, with half their canopies ripped out awkwardly, but they will live, and may regain shape over the years.

The same for the beautiful flowering dogwood at the corner of the garage.  It is deformed, topped, with its middle chopped out, but it will live and may regain its shape over time as well.  The sourwood survived but lost a branch, which it can't afford since it only grows one small branch a year!

So I will start over with some design ideas, and make gardens where stuff has disappeared or must be cut down.  The river birches and white birches all look good, and the evergreens do too.  The sweetbay magnolia is tilted but I can tie it back straighter I think. The Elizabeth magnolia is lopsided, but will survive.

You know what looks good?  The stiff black gums and the stiffly branched blackhaw viburnums.  The strong oaks, even the small ones, look good.

It was a terrible unseasonable storm.  We are warm now tonight, but most of the town is not and is still dark and cold.