Today gets its own post; talk about a cold/ice/windpocolypse! The grand trifecta all of three hit us last night. Fortunately, we aren’t in the path of the infamous wind that comes screeching down the Gorge, but we definitely got the ice and cold temps.
Uh-oh. This isn’t looking too good. The snow kept coming down fast.
Nolemana covered the doves’ aviary to help keep them warm. We do have a heat lamp in there for extreme cold.
By this time, we’d lost power (about 11 a.m.) and Nolemana started the woodstove up. It’s a fireplace insert, and without power for the fan, the heat didn’t go too far in the house. I put a pot of water on the woodstove so that I could make syrup for a second feeder; then I alternated them throughout the day, making sure that they didn’t get close to freezing.
We have a generator, but Nolemana couldn’t get it started. Our friend Ron came over, driving very carefully on the icy roads, to see if he could help. He could only get up about halfway on our driveway, and bless his heart, walked all the rest of the way up. But he couldn’t start it either, and concluded that the oil had gotten too thick in the cold.
We stayed close to the woodstove all day long; so did the kitties.
Our heat finally came back on! Thank you, PGE crew!!
The daily pīpī stayed in the barn all day long.
My friend wasn’t nearly as lucky as we were. PGE came right out and turned off the power to avoid a fire if and when the power came back on again. The tree is still on her house, but contractors came and shored up the inside wall and put a tarp on the roof.
A Mānoa Girl's Bloggie 
Oh, so sorry about your friend’s house! Our thaw started before we got up this morning, and I no longer have to keep warming up the hummers’ food.
Thanks, Michelle. I’m so grateful that my friend had just left that room. She’d been in there just two minutes before! Yikes!
This will be the first night that I don’t bring the hummingbird feeder in, but there’s still lots of ice around here.
YES my son had to drive several miles away from their place in Garden Home neighborhood to get cell service, let alone power, to let me know they were safe. Thankfully they had a fireplace at least. Two days without service. But their house didn’t get hit like two of their neighbors with big trees and limbs! Snowmageddon, he called it hahaha
Snowmageddon for sure… ice where we are. Are more may be coming today! I’m so glad your son is okay!
Aue! 61 tooooo cold in da hale. You’re so smart to have alternative ways to heat the house when you lose power. No wonder your birdies love you–you take such good care of them! We bought a second hummingbird feeder to switch out for weather like this (and I got the idea from you, so mahaloz).
I feel bad for your friend. We saw evidence of a fire in a nearby apartment building and evidence of burst pipes in the form of an otherwise beautiful frozen waterfall. It’s still cold up here, with a high today of 37 (I think), but that’s better than a high of 23!
Too cold is right! Unfortunately, the woodstove only heats the living room w/o the fan running. But we managed.
I’m so glad you got the second hummer feeder! I’ve seen where some people put Christmas lights, or even a wool sock over the feeder; I haven’t tried either of those. I think more easy to just swap feeders.
Yeah, my poor friend…it’s going to be at least two months before things are back to normal. It looks like they’re going to have to rebuild the entire wall where the tree came down. Fortunately, she just got power back on today.