All day yesterday I watched the news about this snow/ice/freeze weather for our area. Prepared and ready to accept Mother Nature's expected fury for us, calmness & prayers filled my mind. 

Living in the southern part of Alabama and very close to the Gulf Coast most of our weather threats are hurricanes and/or tornadoes. We just don't have snow, ice or freezes, and we are certainly not accustomed to temperatures in the low-mid 20's.

But.....last night as the temperatures dropped & rain/sleet fell, freezing began. Somewhere around 9PM we started hearing some "cracking and/or crashing" around our neighborhood. Street lights were flickering off for a period and then clicking back on. Not much more happening so we decided to retire for the night.

Around 12:30AM or so a loud crash awoke us. Fearing the worst from the sound that was made, we raced to windows to find the sound source. A very large pine tree branch (from our pine tree) had fallen into our neighbor's driveway and cracked into a million pieces. 

From the window we could see her outside assessing the damage. We got her attention, waved and then she & I spoke on the phone to calm our nerves a bit. (Last time our trees participated big time in nature's plan was back when Hurricane Ivan came through and a tree {her tree BTW} fell on our patio cover and back portion of our house) A little more outside weather noise before I finally fell asleep.

I awakened this morning around 8:15 to see what all had happened during the night. Power lines down, some power outages throughout the city (most resolved now), limbs down and some vehicle accidents. Thankfully, the only weather related activity we had at the house was three rather large limbs that had fallen due to being laden with ice. The picture below is one branch that I expect to fall before too long.

Looking around the neighborhood several large limbs full of ice fell during the night. The grounds are dusted with snow. Our back yard has more snow than the front.

A look at some of our trees full of frozen ice. 

My poor cedar trees 

Gathering limbs to the road 

Sweet neighbor Gayle 

Thankful for being safe & warm.

Prayers for those who are 

still stranded in the Atlanta area.

Loving the kindnesses I'm reading about others.