Reporting in from the Central Texas Ice Storm. Nasty out there.

Every tree and bush in sight is covered with a layer of ice.

So are the electrical lines....

One of our big live oaks likes to lay its branches down on the roof when 

the frozen branches get too heavy. It's a gentle descend and no 

branches are broken.....this time. When it thaws out our hope 

is that it will spring back up. It always has before...

I woke up last night to a series of deep, low frequency hums generated by transformers headed toward catastrophic shut downs. Outside my bedroom window I kept seeing bright, long time flashes of greenish light. The kind that usually signals transformer failure. We got hit by an ice storm last night. Pretty much everyone in central Texas got walloped. 

After the first wake up I couldn't get back to sleep. I kept listening for stuff. Was the central heating cycling on and off? Were the transformer hums and bright flashes getting closer? Brighter? Louder? Could I still hear the faucet dripping in the bathroom furthest from the city water supply? Did I have a back-up plan for any of this stuff?

At some point I dozed off and got a few hours of much needed sleep. When I got up I did the rounds inside the house. No frozen pipes. check. No leaks anywhere. check. Electricity on. check. Heater functioning optimally. check. No blinking appliance clocks = no power outage. check. All good so the next step was the creation of good, hot coffee. And some breakfast. check. 

I fired up the kitchen table laptop and checked the news. 20% of Austin residents are currently knocked out of power! Tree branches and trees are down all over the city. All untreated bridges and overpasses are coated with at least half an inch of ice. Every one is sending out texts and emails to inform the public that everything is closed down. It feels a bit like the really outrageous ice storm of 2021 but this time we haven't gotten into the freezingXinfinity cold temperatures. It's just hovering for the last three days around 29 to 31°.  Just cold enough to make ice stick on everything but not cold enough to tax the power grid. 

All the outages so far seem to be the result of power lines downed by ice or ice-covered tree limbs. The grid seems to be holding up okay. 

Relief is in sight. Temp are supposed to climb into the mid-30s this afternoon. We'll have one more freezing night, accompanied by sticky rain-turning-to-ice and then we start to come out of the chilly weather and actually are predicted to get some sunshine by the end of the day Friday. 

As soon as the day started I got (and sent) dozens of texts to check on local family and friends. Ben is fine. His house lost power for one hour. He's back at his desk working with a cup of coffee close at hand and the heater working well. My brother in SA dodged the freezing weather. They just have a bunch of gray raininess. Friend, Paul, has been without power since 6 this morning. He's got a gas range so he's been able to get coffee and breakfast. We've issued blanket invitations to any who need a place to warm up and get good food service to come on over. We've got a huge living room with a lively fireplace and room for a multitude. 

So, nothing got done this week. Nothing will get done this week beyond re-supplying just in case we get another storm soon. We've mostly been doing walks when and where we can. Doing yoga in front of the TV; "Yoga with Adrian" is a house favorite. Push ups are a fact of life. No swimming until the pool opens up again (Friday???) but that's no excuse not to get the heart rate up and the lungs working. 

Sadly, when the weather gets really bad my resistance to shopping for photo gear goes down. I've found several items on line that are battering my will to resist. Including a "Khaki" limited edition Leica Q (first version) for "only" $3,000. I haven't clicked the "buy now" button yet but it feels like it's only a matter of time. My last buffer is writing this publicly with the hope that someone swoops in before me and snaps this treasure up. Thus saving me from my own shopping dalliance. 

We'll weather this with some bruises to the trees and the almost certain demise of the sad succulent garden B. has been nursing back to health since the last freeze; and hope we don't get too many more ice storms this year. A soft dusting with dry snow? We'd like that. But black ice? You can keep that. 

Now on the search for the perfect cookie. I hope it exists in the house. Especially since the stores are likely closed this morning. Ah well, I can always bake.