The Brutal Snow

We didn’t believe it was really going to snow. We figured it would be a few wet flakes and it wouldn’t stick to the ground. There hasn’t been a measurable snowfall in NJ for October since the 1950s - and even then it was less than an inch. How could we possibly have a real Nor'easter? That would be a once-in-a-thousand-year storm... haven’t we already done that this year?

It was officially worse than Hurricane Irene for downed trees and power lines. A mild fall in NJ means there are lots of leaves still on the trees at Halloween, even green ones. Several inches of heavy wet snow on top of all those heavy wet leaves made for hundreds of downed branches and trees in our neighborhood alone. Transformers exploded and lit up the night sky and power lines were down everywhere. The whole day and night was haunted by the loud cracking of branches and trees going down.

We were out of power for two full days, and we were the lucky ones. It’s been freezing cold and miserable without heat. Most people still don’t have power. Everywhere we go, it looks like a disaster zone. Schools are still closed tomorrow. Traffic lights are off. Roads are closed. Phone service is spotty. We have a lot of cleanup to do, a lot of damage to access and repair in the yard, and then deal with other consequences from the storm. So I’m cutting myself some slack this week on the blog - posting is going to be light as we recover.

All images are from the the Morris Township-Morris Plains Patch. I didn’t think to take pictures - too much was going on and I was too cold. But take a drive anywhere in Northern NJ right now and you can see branches and downed trees like this every 10 feet.