By: Tom Freeland, HottyToddy.com, Blogger
Twenty years ago, the temperature stuck at 32 degrees for several days. Just before, it had been significantly colder. But when it hit 32, rain started falling, and it froze everywhere it hit. Water was coming down, and it was freezing. It made a strange ice dam on my roof, and water came through inside the windows in my second floor. The only thing I could figure out to do was to open the windows a bit, jam cookie sheets in there, to launch the water back outside.
Power was out, so there was no heat upstairs. Downstairs, I had a fireplace, and was sleeping in front of it. When the ice started, I parked a car near the foot of my driveway. And just happened to be looking out that window just in time to see a pretty large hardwood come down, WOOM, and miss the rear bumper of the car by about 4 feet.
Rear bumper meaning it would require a chain saw before I could leave.
The pine thicket behind my house was having limbs explode likes shots going off; at one point, at midday, I saw a big buck standing outlines on a ridge between thickets, unsure where to go.
Sent the kids into town to live with friends. Had days of living like a pioneer– if I wanted heat, I was going to have to go out, hack wood out of the pile from the ice, and bring it in to my (inefficient) fireplace. Did have the best baked potatoes ever from foil slipped into those coals.
With no water, took five gallon jugs into town to the ice house (which had its own pump and well and offered free water for all). The loss of the ice house is one of the major steps backward for Oxford in the last 20 years.
That’s just some of the stories I recall. Anyone from Oxford has more to add.
Read more blog posts by Tom Freeland at his NMissCommentor blog page.
The Great Ice Storm of 1994
