Last night, or rather early this morning, at 1AM I got up. Last night was our coldest night expected. And at 1AM it was 19 degrees outside. How much lower did it actually get, I’m not sure. Considering the forecast for this area was 18 I’m betting we dropped below that.
Yesterday, during the day time, I had a small space heater blowing near where my water softener attaches to the house water. Last year that was where it froze and I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen again. I wanted to make sure water was running, so when I turned the heater off, it was to run a tap in one of the spare bathrooms. They said to run it farthest from where water comes in. I didn’t choose that faucet since that was attached to the room I was sleeping in and I didn’t want to listen to dripping water all night. But I did pick the next best. The good news is that running the space heater had heated the area near the water softener to 50 degrees, I had a thermometer near it. Even with out it running all night that area was about 45 this morning. And the water was running okay too.
As for today it is now 2:30 PM and here at my house we have made it up to 40 degrees. Ice is melting, and has been sliding off the roof top. Most of it slid off this morning, and I could hear it, especially when I walked outside, or opened the door. Most of it is now gone, other than those areas that don’t get much sun light.
With this temperature most of the glass areas are now wet, but no longer frozen. Some area, those that have had all day sun, those areas are actually dry. Most of the roads area dry too.
It was dry enough I was actually able to walk Linus, my dog. One thing I notice out on my walk was flying icicles. This morning we had some wind, I noted 8mph on my weather station. Consequently, it was shaking trees. That shaking, at least I’m guessing here, was able to dislodge ice from the trees and send it flying. I even have ice pieces in the middle of my driveway. I’m guessing this is a result of the flying ice, since there is no other easy explanation – no tree limbs over my driveway.
As for the yard, the ice yesterday left one of my apple trees bent over. As of right now its still bent over, but it has not broken. So I’m guessing it has survived so far. It doesn’t look like any limbs broke on any of my trees. I consider that a good thing. I shouldn’t lose any trees from this storm.
It was nice getting out for the walk, but it was cold. I was glad to get back into the house. I will say the birds ate all the birdseed I had out. I mean all the bird seed. It was empty, not much stuck to the bottom even. I did refill it today. I’m sure the brds will be happy for that.