February 22 Steuben County Indiana had a significant ice storm where the location had 2.35 inches of rain that turned into some cases of 1/2 inch of ice that weighed on trees causing the loss of limbs and in some cases entire trees fell down. With this type of destruction, the area also lost power and there are some locations still without power.
Our property trees don’t do well in icestorms even when it is relatively minor, so this storm was catastrophic for us. We have several large trees that haven’t been bothered much before that lost most of their limbs. In the past we have used that area for pens having over the years goats, ponies, chickens, and dogs that lived there. It sure is good that no one lives there now as it is a disaster there now. This is a picture looking into that area. This picture doesn’t do a good job of showing the limbs that are down plus it is taken over the stump that was left from the 3rd tree that used to be there that we lost due to a mini tornado. If you look closely, you might recognize a large limb in the background and in the foreground just slightly to the right and going into the picture is another large limb. On the extreme right snf in the lower area are landscape railroad ties that are stored there.
This 2nd picture is taken further back approaching where the dog pen used to be. While it does show more limbs down it still does not show the complete view of all the limbs on the ground. Some of the limbs down are as big as medium size trees.
The pen area was not seen until Thursday morning as was more concerned what was going on closer to the house Wednesday evening and night. The crashing that was going on around us that evening felt like being in a war zone.
The next picture is the tree beside the lean-to building and this tree is one of the two trees that have suffered the most from ice damage in the past and it also again had much loss of limbs. The bench that was at the base of the tree didn’t survive this go round.
While the pine tree has had some limb loss in the past, this storm wreaked havoc on it. This picture shows the tip of the limb which is braced over the well. Luckily it was able to brace and not impact the well.
And this picture shows the limb going back to the tree. This was a large limb growing out from a lower section on the trunk and hard to imagine it breaking. Did read where the ice that happened Wednesday was heavy and had a lot of weight and this limb is sure proof of that.
Any other time we would consider the tree damage in the front as siginificant yet now it is minor. The most damaged is our beautiful cedar and now we are going to trim it down to about half its size.
The cleanup will take us a long time as we will be doing all of it ourselves. As nothing is causing any issues to other people there is no pressure as far as a timeline. And we have all the equipment that is needed to do the work.