After a few years of record, freakish storms, the Atlantic coast has been oddly quiet this year with no hurricane risks, or ever any nor'easters. But this has led to several inches of rain deficit and slowly building drought in the East. Last night the front came in with some rain but no big wind (these things can be very localized). A few weeks ago though, there were tornados in the area. Hurricanes are monstrous enough, but it have a real fear of tornados! I played hokey today. It is currently, crystal clear blue skies and in the mid 60's--gorgeous.

Our Shumard was bent, but not broken as it likely would have been if hit with the 2nd or 3rd inch of ice dropped on some neighborhoods a bit to our north. A little more than an inch will increase leaf weight by about 20X on marcescent trees (like many oaks) that refuse to be stripped. Add a little wind and the region is left with a lot of damaged trees, though worst hit around here seemed to be oaks, Callery pears (duh), and desert willow. Photo shows the difference of 18 days and an inch+ of ice. Only broken limbs on our neighbor's massive red oak are large distal branches that filled very rapidly into canopy space vacated by a large fruitless mulberry we removed about 20 months ago. They were already 2 to 4 inches in diameter and 6 to 12 feet long. I'm assuming they broke because this fast growth made them relatively weaker than the rest of the tree. Anyone know if that is right?

My sweet almond verbana tree (approx. 12 feet tall) was knocked down and when it fell, it took out part of our fence. My arbor was also blown a few feet away and when it fell to the ground it snapped my honey bell tangelo in half. Tha is the worst that happen and a consider myself lucky because I know there were some twisters a few miles away in the area. Funny thing is no one else around us had any damage. My hubby and I were able to use a truck and pull the verbana tree back up. We staked it in the ground and my fingers are crossed that it will live. We took a video of us pulling the tree back up. I will try to post a link to it a bit later.

I've been away in Dallas almost all day and our weather forecast deteriorated a lot while we were gone. I knew that was a possibility so prepared for it as best as I could before we left. We will get very cold here, but the amount of snow we might see has been all over the place in the different forecasts. Our local meteorologist says to expect from 1/10" to 1/4" of ice, followed by a likely 4-8" of snow. Both thundersleet and thundersnow are forecast to be a possibility here before the weather "settles down" and it all turns into plain old snow. If our forecast is correct, our lowest temps during this storm will match our lowest temps during last year's snowstorms, but the wind chill is going to be significantly worse. George, we haven't had any chicken feet freeze although I know it is possible, but a couple of times when we've dipped into the low single digits, a rooster has had the tips of his comb freeze. We have the heat lamps in the chicken coops to turn on during cold weather and they seem to keep the coops reasonably warm. I made 4 batches of cookies and have cinnamon rolls in the oven now so I'll have something to send out with the firefighters on their trucks, along with thermos bottles of coffee. I hope to catch up on a lot of garden reading and planning, and maybe some seed-starting if it stays quiet around here. With some of the schools here closing well in advance of the storm, I'm just hoping everyone stays home after the ice starts falling and stays off the roads and stays safe and warm. Since Tues. and Wed. nights will be so cold, tomorrow we'll rearrange the dining room furniture to make room for the dog crates that normally are in the garage. The three outside dogs sleep in the garage most nights, but we bring them inside on the really cold nights. Of course, they are so excited to be allowed to sleep indoors that they stay awake and bark all night long, which seems to defeat the purpose of sleeping indoors. At least this cold spell will "tell" the fruit trees to stop trying to bloom too early. Since we had the hot weather last week, they are itching to go ahead and bloom, and I'd rather they not do that just yet.