This weekend had me revisiting memories of our 2008 ice storm of the century. Trees beautified by snow on Friday were mostly bare Saturday while we looked at two trees blocking the end of our apartment driveway. One neighbor could not get out for her medical treatment. Maintenance men and delivery drivers gave us news of downed trees, electric lines in the roads and driving behind buildings and around town to get to our complex. One man decided it was too risky to try driving under trees overhanging High Street near the cemetery.
I walked to see the tree across the lower end of High Street blocking access up or down. The sidewalk was not passable, with piles of heavy snow from plowed driveways encasing sidewalk ends. WMUR said we got 21 inches of snow. We lost power around 2 a.m. A neighbor decided to have her Christmas party with pizza brought from Jaffrey since Pizza Barn had no power, with her son gracious (thank you Gary) to bring pizza from his town. Power came back, but we asked to keep the battery-powered lights for ambiance. It was nice knowing we would be going to bed in our own apartments with heat, where we had expected to have two more nights without power. One woman had gone for bags of ice to put in our refrigerators.
We expected all of us in a tiny living room/kitchen would generate enough heat to ignore no electricity and lack of heat. Without the pizza, we could have used the outdoor grill to heat water and grilled whatever out of refrigerators and freezers, but the Christmas party turned out fine, even without the homemade clam chowder that could not be made.
Kath Allen
Peterborough