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Corky

"Storm of the Decade"

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Now that we have safely escaped Northern Michigan and are back in Montana, I have had time to go through the nearly 400 photos I took when we were stranded by the "storm of the decade" that struck the Traverse Bay area of N. Michigan while we were there early this month.

 

We drove in to make some upgrades to our home (for sale) on Torch Lake, arriving just in time for 22 inches of wet, heavy snow that began at noon and had the power out by dusk. No power meant no lights, heat or water. We cook with gas, and could light the stove with matches, but we hadn't used the fireplace in years! We were running out of cell phone battery reserve and it was cold, so we turned the phones off and crawled into bed at 7PM. We awoke the next morning to a disaster of the tallest trees bending to touch the ground, a fifteen foot spruce, 14 years planted, uprooted ("It wants to come to Montana, honey!" I crowed - He just grunted, having already toted a 5' one there.), and the only road out blocked, in the first mile, by thirty or more fallen trees! Just to add a little stress, when we turned on our phones, each had three frantic voicemails: Larry's brother, healthy last we knew (on Wed), was in an Idaho hospital awaiting open heart surgery! Well and truly stuck, and unable to get even to the nearest neighbor's woodpile, we scrounged from our old wood stash and made a fire, boiled snow and cooked the corned beef I had (fortunately) bought, sticking foil wrapped potatoes in the fire.

 

On the third day we made it to the only hotel open in TC (which looked like a ghost town): no TV, Internet ot elevators as they were on emergency power themselves. The next morning the parking lot outside our room held 57 power trucks, from as far away as Joplin, MO (where they have had their own problems).

 

Seven days later our power came back on: just long enough for me to get a load of wash in the dryer and one in the washer - then it went back off for another day and a half. Stuck again: you cannot leave all your jeans soaking in a washer for six weeks! (and front loaders lock.) Below are a few photos of the most amazing, and most beautiful, sights of the week. The one of the 50' birch whose branches swept the ground unfortunately didn't upload well: it was quite a sight!

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Exactly what I thought as I read and looked. Wow! And so hard to look at years and years of work broken. (Although I bet some of the big trees that were bowed way down managed to straighten back up. They amaze me.)

Good luck with the longer term clean up.

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