And the Weather Hits Keep Coming...

I'm not sure what the Northeast did to Mother Nature, but I think she is a little mad at us. Just a week after Hurricane Sandy, Winter Storm Athena graced us with her presence. And she hit most of the areas Sandy did... with snow, wind, rain, and more snow. A very wet, heavy snow. We got maybe 4". Thankfully, not much more than that because it was the type of snow you couldn't use a snow blower for... it was that wet and heavy.

Some people that had just got power back lost it again, this time being left with much colder temps than the week before. Last night dropped to around 30º for my area. Same prediction for tonight. We got lucky, we power surged once... it was enough to reset some electronics, like my stereo, but wasn't enough to reset the clocks. For that brief moment, I feared the worst. But that surge was it. But we were prepared this time if we lost power... we had no food in the fridge. And seeing that we kept power for this storm, I'd say the worst is over and it's time to hit the grocery store. That is if the stores are stocked. They've also been a bit slow to recover since they had to toss a great deal of their food due to the power outages. It's quite sad really, the amount of much need food that got wasted with this storm.

Anyways.

While Athena didn't do much, it did make it pretty easy to see just how much damage Hurricane Sandy, last summer's hurricane (Irene), last winter's Nor'Easters, and all the minor storm over the last year have done to my backyard and all the neighborhood trees. Poor, poor trees. They are my favorite thing to photograph, hope there will be some left by next spring!

The snow looks like it's really high in this photo, but it's not... the trees are just hanging crazy low. Their poor branches are still so weak. The hole on the left side of the picture... that used to be filled with trees. It might not be easy to see in the photo, but there are a number of fallen branches and trees in the back there. If things keep up the way they are, we aren't going to have woods left for very long.

More trees bending under the weight of the snow. 

This is one of the saddest sight there is. My favorite little tree near our front porch. It's not supposed to look like that. At all. And it's never split before.

This is the same tree during a storm in January 2012, also with about 4" of snow. This is what it normally looks like. Standing pretty. Thankfully, once the snow fell off it regained most of its shape. Still will need some TLC before the year is over to get it back to tip top shape.

Temps are predicted to hit the low 60ºs Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, so all the snow should melt away. Till the next storm.