Today’s posting will be a sort of minute-by-minute report.
Last night, the Governor of Georgia declared a State of Emergency for Southeast Georgia. Guess what? That’s exactly where we are!
About 7am, we heard and saw a branch fall across the street – – right beside the neighbor’s truck. It wasn’t bad yet and I really wanted some fresh air, so I took a short walk.
The ice is starting to form
The branch that fell across the street
Early this morning, before things got bad, I went for a short walk to try to capture ice pictures.
This doesn’t look like much until you consider that the palms were standing straight up yesterday when we got here.
At 7:45am, our power went out. We’re not sure how long it was actually out, because the coach automatically switched to battery power for an unknown period of time. Blaine kicked in to electrician mode. I’m so glad he has that knowledge!
The power went out again at 9am. Ice fell either from the top of the coach or the trees above us. Blaine is perplexed. I just sit. He says there’s nothing I can do. Also, power outage here means – no heat, no hot water, no internet, no TV.
Blaine turned on the generator to get some heat in here. There’s little insulation, so that means it cools off really quickly. It’s hovering around 31-32 degrees outside.
The first large limb near us fell across the street at 9:30am. Kinda scary now, as we sit under all these giant trees!
Between noon and 1pm, heavy things started hitting our roof every 10-15 minutes. We don’t know if it’s ice, branches, or limbs. Blaine will get the ladder out and inspect once the ice is all melted.
We spotted neighbors a few campers down and behind us up on their roof using a mop and towels, shoving off quite a bit of ice and water and some branches. We’re wondering if they have a leak because it looked like they put a tarp down.
Water poured off the awnings. This was a small trickle compared to what we had later.
We don’t have any leaks. At least not yet. We’re doing a lot of praying.
It’s 1:30pm and the power’s still out. So’s the cable TV. Blaine was able to get a couple of local channels to check up on the weather. We’re right on the edge of rain/freezing rain. Supposedly it’ll be over by 3pm.
At 2:15pm, the ice was falling heavily out of the trees. Heavy rain. Blaine checked Georgia Power and our campground isn’t listed as having an outage. He tried calling the front desk. No answer.
At 2:30, the sun came out! And then the ice REALLY started falling – as heavy, heavy rain! We know it’s not rain, because radar shows no rain close to us. So Weird!! And so MUCH! It’s still coming down 45 minutes later!
I can’t believe it didn’t show up, but Blaine took this picture because the sun was out and the melted ice was pouring down.
3:30 – Blaine was able to get out and check our roof. There appears to be no damage. THANK YOU GOD!!! A couple of small limbs and lots of water and ice, but when those limbs fell, it sounded like the roof was crashing in!
Checking out what happened up there
That’s it? Those little branches??
There they are!
We also decided to walk to the office (under still raining trees!) to see about the power outage. The office was closed, but there was some guy (maybe a campground host?) who hurriedly told us and another couple who’d ventured out that Georgia Power told them to check back about 5pm.
We saw several trees with this circle of ice around them from when it just fell off the trees all at once.
Our generator runs on our diesel fuel. If the power stays out, we may have to choose between staying halfway warm and leaving here. . .
We decided to get in the Jeep and drive around the island. That was partly to get warmed up. There were quite a few branches down all over, but nothing to indicate a reason for a power outage. Some places had power, some did not.
At 4pm, power was restored! And right after I put on a second pair of socks! I wish I’d done that sooner . . . . 😊 We had dinner and watched the news.
They’ve named this storm Grayson. It dropped 6” of snow onto Charleston. The city is shut down for the next several days – as are other towns. Remember, they have no plows around here to deal with it! It’s fun to watch the news and how excited they get over some of the little things. One woman was showing pictures people had sent the station and her favorite was a man who “built a snowman”. It was about 2 feet tall and really just a tube of snow in a pile with a hat. 😊
Oh! And I realized this morning that I never told you why the front entrances of the homes in Savannah are elevated. I never meant to do that to you. I’m sorry. Blaine said he noticed but didn’t say anything. What am I paying him for??
The reason is to limit the dirt coming in. There was no air conditioning and the roads were all dirt at the time they were built. By raising the door, they could leave their doors open for ventilation and less dirt would come in.
The lower doors were entrances to either servants (aka slaves) quarters or the kitchen.
TOTAL MILES: ZEE-RO!!
YEAR TO DATE: .75 That averages to one-quarter mile a day! Abysmal! That’s only about 500 steps a day, or the equivalent of only walking for 5 Minutes!!! Aggghhh!!