The Morning After The Storm

We're in a strange little pocket of calm in the midst of Nature's fury. All around us are reports of highways closed, more than a foot of snow, power lines sizzling across the roads. Here, at the foot of the Catskills, we've got fluffy, gentle little flakes that melt before they can accumulate.




It's been a record-breaker, this series of late February storms. Over a hundred thousand people in two counties have been without power for three days...many of them got their power back briefly, only to have it knocked out in the latest storm.
And there's another on the way.

The winds howled here last night but the lines held. The sky is still that bright pewter gray that promises more snow is a possibility, but it's not that dark, glowering gray that threatens a blizzard.

My guy told me when he was working late in his studio, the winds were howling so loudly that he gave up trying to muffle the noise as he was recording - he just sang right over them. That should create some interesting effects.

I'm hoping the snow holds off so we can go tour the area...there's one neighborhood in particular that turns into a riverfront community after heavy rains. Water pours off the mountain into a pipe which dumps all the water in their front yards and covers their driveways. It's quite a sight. I wonder if they have rafts for such occasions.

Spring's almost here, right?

Gale Force Winds

"...And like a never-dying force, the wind
Roared till we shouted with it... " 'The Wanderer' John Masefield

Wild weather this February has brought. Yesterday's snows were so heavy that they left close to two hundred thousand people without power in just two Hudson Valley counties. Then came the rain, the rising streams, the flooded roads, and predictions of the worst still to come.

We expected a foot of snow in our little town today. Instead we got some fat, jolly flakes, a lot of rain and a lot of slush.

The storm arrived tonight. As I sit here writing, I feel like I'm in a ship at sea. The wind is lashing the driving rain against the house and howling around the corners. People we know have deserted their homes, people who lost power yesterday and have no hope of getting it back before the weekend. We've been lucky. We've got heat, lights, even our connection to the web.

Yet we're alone tonight, tossing and pitching in the center of a furious winter storm, listening to the rain pound against the windows. I worry that if the temperatures drop just a little, that rain will freeze. Then we'll be adrift in a sea of ice. I worry about the people who have to go out and I'm grateful I'm not one of them.

I can ride out the storm, secure under the covers tonight. Tomorrow morning I will wake up and the occasional stream below the rocks in our backyard will be a pond. It's possible the wind will still be screaming. Or perhaps it will all be over, and everything will seem swept clean, scrubbed and fresh.