And all the Trees Were Weeping Willows -The Ice Storm of 1991

Winter seemed to be winding down in Rochester, New York. There had already been several jacket-free days. For you Southern Californians; this means forty-five degrees or above. Crocus was already blooming, it was enough to lull you into the belief that winter had done it's worse. Even if you knew better, which, of course, everyone did.

I hadn't seen my roommate in a while. He had gone off on a week-long trip that was going on three. I didn't even know where. Things were either going splendidly for him, or horribly, horribly wrong.

I was happy enough to have the house to myself.

When he did show up, the first, and practically last, words out of his mouth were: “I'm moving to New Orleans!” I appeared to be happy for him, but I was mostly just happy for me.

He packed every inch of his Hyundai, leaving a small spot to see out the windshield and left behind everything that wouldn't fit, including the table I am sitting at here in California twenty-one years later.

He also left an unpaid electric bill of over six hundred dollars and a notice from the power company that they were going to disconnect the power on Monday, March 4^th.

It was Thursday.

That night I was leaving myself on a weekend road trip to Tennessee with my brother. From a payphone in Nashville the next day, I explained to Rochester Gas and Electric that I was a new tenant and so there would be no need to shut off my power thank-you-very-much. They explained to me that with a copy of my new lease they would be happy set up a new account and not leave me in the dark. I couldn't get a hold of my landlord before the close of business that day so that, as they say, was that. I would just have to deal with it on Monday if possible, or live a few days without power.

My brother I and took turns driving on the fourteen hour trip home. We left Sunday night with hopes of arriving in Rochester before rush hour. The only sleep to be had that night was by the one with the steering wheel in his hands. Knowing this, the one in the passenger seat sat wide awake with half an eye on the groggy driver. The driving shifts got shorter and shorter as the night progressed.

As the Interstate passed close to Lake Erie the wind blew rain and the road became crusty with ice. Driving wasn't any easier, but the bucking and slipping of the car made it easier for the driver to stay awake, and impossible for the passenger to even close their eyes.

In the the sky above us, a rare set of conditions were forming: layers of warm and cold air had formed at relatively low altitudes and the surface temperature was steady just below the freezing point. Upper atmosphere snow was being melted by the warm layers of air, the resulting droplets supercooled by the cold layers then turning to ice the moment it hit the ground, pavement, or building...

...or tree branch.

On the radio: advisories and warnings, but our radio, wasn't on.

The Sun was coming up. Between our fatigue and the weather, our plans to beat rush hour were dashed. We were doomed to spend the last hour of our dreary journey being repeatedly jolted awake by brake lights and being elbowed by the wide-eyed one in the passenger seat.

The daylight showed a different landscape than we had expected. Trees seemed to glisten in the morning light. There was no snow, yet everything was a shiny white. I looked closely at a chain-link fence along the 490 Expressway. It was a solid glass sheet of ice from top to bottom. The holes between the links had completely closed!

Something was wrong with the trees too. They were all weeping willows, hanging low in graceful sad arches. These were not willows though, trees of all sorts were bending to their breaking point and beyond, laden with an inch-thick coating of ice on every twig. Thousands and thousands of pounds of ice.

Something else was wrong; more wrong and out-of-place than anything else we had seen. We didn't notice right away because it something we weren't seeing.

Traffic.

We were ten or-so miles from a medium-sized city at the height of rush hour on a Monday morning, and there was no traffic. None!

“Is it some sort of holiday we forgot?” I asked my brother.

“There's some traffic on a holiday.”

True that. There would have been more traffic at 3AM... in Minot, North Dakota.

We were, in fact, the only car on the road. It was as if we were entering a shining, deserted crystal city. Combined with our lack of sleep, it was a truly bizarre experience.

It wasn't until we got off the expressway that we learned just how bizarre. The view down Goodman street normally went for a good half mile as it sloped up towards Highland Park, but all we could see were trees hanging so low they nearly brushed the pavement. Huge branches that had succumb to the weight of the ice lay in the street, some of them the size of trees themselves. We slowly drove around the debris on whichever side of the street was open. It was a war zone. 

There were no people to be found: no cars, no pedestrians, not a light in a single window or business, even the traffic lights were dark.

Had I been a bigger believer in the rapture, I might have been quite concerned.

We wound around the fallen arbor and drove carefully over the litter of smaller branches and broken bark towards my house. Goodman Street looked impassable, so we entered my street in the other direction from Clinton. A long branch blocked the entire street just a few doors from my own. We got out of the car and hobbled stiff-legged on the icy pavement. The air was still and dead without the usual sound of the city, but it was not quiet. The continual creaking of the ice covered trees was all around us. We made several attempts to move the branch but it was too big, too heavy, and our feet just slipped on the ice.

An old man came out on his porch. “Get inside!” he shouted pointing up at the other trees bending and groaning under the weight of the ice, “you could be killed!”

His point was made by a sharp gunshot sound a couple of blocks away, followed by the dramatic crash of a branch, an immense wooden chandelier and it's icy crystal hitting the ground.

We got back in the car, turned around and attempted an approach from Goodman again. Despite it's appearance, it was clear just far enough to get to the other end of my street and get to my house.

I carefully walked up the slick steps to my kitchen door and waved to my brother as he pulled out of the driveway to trek to his apartment about a mile-and-a-half away. Once inside, I knew there wouldn't be any power, but by instinct I hit the switch anyway.

Over 300,000 people were in the dark and cold. The trees and branches that had fallen had taken down many power lines in their path.

I learned later that the deserted streets were because of a general ban on all travel at that time. Had the police not been completely beleaguered with emergencies, we probably would have been stopped or road-blocked outside of Rochester somewhere.

In downtown Rochester, ten foot sheets of ice were falling off the glass windows of tall buildings making it perilous to walk below.

Disasters were declared in 19 counties in Upstate New York. Five percent of the states total power output had been taken out simply by the gentle accumulation of frozen water.

Forty miles to the South. A large tree in my parents' front yard, one I had climbed and swung from as a kid, had grown so heavy it toppled over, roots and all. It fell towards their house damaging the roof and pounding a four-by-four fence post straight and clean into the rain sodden earth like a hammer hitting a nail. It's presumably still there.

My folks were also without power for days.

It all started out as a novel adventure, for my Dad at least, who found great photographic opportunities exploring the surreal ice world. After a couple days when all the ice had melted leaving a typical brown and muddy March, and of living in the 19^th century, even he had had all the adventure he could stand.

My parents were luckier than some. They had wood stoves to cook on and heat their home with. Many ended up in shelters for days and weeks.

I myself got pretty handy with a chainsaw helping my dad dispose of his fallen tree. It was fortunate that he already owned one. Generators and chainsaws flew off the shelves of hardware and farm stores within hours. Batteries and other consumables disappeared from everywhere else.

It took over two weeks to restore power to all who had lost it in the storm. Power companies from several states and even Canada flocked to help in much publicized convoys.

The long-term damage was to the trees themselves. 

If you're not from the area, it's hard to appreciate the amount of Upstate New York that is covered and shaded by trees. Over 100,000 trees were completely destroyed. Many more times that were severely damaged. There was hardly a tree or shrub anywhere that had not been mangled in some way. For several years the damage was plain to see. Much was never recovered; people simply got used to the less green landscape and eventually forgot about the shady spots they'd lost.

The fallen and damaged trees and branches were collected by the city and taken to improvised dumping areas where they formed scores of house sized piles of wooden carnage.

That summer, everyone's gardens were covered with one of the only bounties of the ice storm: more free mulch than you could shake a stick at.

Ironically, for me, the whole thing was just a sweet deal. When I had flipped the switch after coming home that morning, the lights had come on!

I talked to my brother later that day. He asked me what I was going to do about my ex-roommate's delinquent power bill and RG&E turning off my power.

“Nothing,” I said, “they won't be able to even think about my new account, let alone turning off my power for at least a week.”

I did get them a copy of my lease and set up a new account, and I did it in my own sweet time.

Despite one of the biggest and longest power outages in Rochester history, I, the guy who was supposed to have his turned off, never lost mine.