Ice storm

As well as being dangerous and inconvenient, ice storms are very beautiful when the sun shines. The ice around tree branches reflects light and makes things look as though they are made of glace.

The Northeast has completely iced over! The freezing rain started Thursday, but it didn't get bad until late Thursday night. By Friday, there were power lines down all over the state. Route 27, the only road into Boothbay Harbor, was closed for the day, so I had my first official snow day. The State government also closed all offices, so Kerstin was home as well. We hunkered down and listed to branches falling outside. We lost power for a few hours on Friday, but we had a nice fire going and all was cozy. The only real inconvenience was the loss of power to lab servers and possibly, loss of power to our incubators, which may mean that our cultures are all dead. Willie was able to get the incubator going again on Friday afternoon, but we don't know if the cultures will recover. I shudder to think of that possibility.

Icy pumpkin vines on our "woodchuck-proof" fence.

The rain/sleet stopped around 3 on Friday afternoon and Ben answered the call of the shovel. It was no easy feat to clear the driveway, seeing as it was half slush and half ice. Our neighbor Claire was clearing her driveway too and her dog Comet came out to see what all the commotion was about. He was excited to see that Ben was back. Comet is the friendliest, sweetest dog on the planet and lives to chase stuff. Icy, gritty, nasty hard snow is no exception. This dog tried to eat every shovelful.