The storm has ended this morning and it is back to being quiet. Yesterday was something else. Strong winds blew all day long. The power went out shortly after 7am and was out for six hours. Rain, sleet and snow pelted the house the entire time. The wind howled and circled around the house. After four hours of no power and the house starting to cool off I crawled in bed and took a nap. I woke up in time for the power to come back on.
Though we had power in the afternoon and the snow and sleet had ended the wind kept blowing. It turned all the moisture on the ground into shear ice. Instead of ice grippers I may need ice skates to get to work. I live on a dirt road but with all the ice on it, it now shines like glass. I decided that it wasn't a good day to be out so I started to bake cookies. I had the dough made and was filling the pans with drops of delicious batter. Trying some out of course. (bad weather does not help eat a healthy diet) when I got a call from a friend asking if I was interested in going to the bay to see the waves before the sunset. The cookie dough was left there on the counter and I rushed to put on my gear.
The road to the bay was sort of clear of ice. We were the only ones on the road so we drove around the icy spots as best we could. The wind was trying to blow our little car off the road but my friend did a great job of driving. We got to the bay and parked the car. I opened my door and was met with a blast of icy cold air. We estimated that the wind was blowing about 45 mph. You could feel the salt spray as it hit your face in icy pelts. We had to walk against the wind down to the beach. Walking carefully so as not to trip on the ice, I had to lean into the wind to walk. It felt like my face was about to be wiped clean off. I held my hat to my head and bent lower and continued walking to the beach.
Once we finally reached the beach I had to turn my back to the wind so that I could warm up my face but not for too long as the sight was to amazing. Twelve foot waves smashed upon the beach. With each roll you could see the land erode away. The water was higher than I had ever seen it. It was right at high tide. The tide here can rise 15 to 30 feet on a normal tide but NOAA said that high tide would be eight feet higher with the storm surge. Normally there is a nice drop to the beach as most of the shoreline is sandy cliffs but yesterday the water was over half way up the side of them. I tried to take picture but my bare hands were freezing in the wind and water. I put my camera away and we walked back to the car with the wind basically pushing us all the way.
We made one more stop before we headed back to the comfort of our houses. We stopped at the city dock to see how the river was doing. Naknek river was definitely flowing backwards. Water was high and part of the road had been washed away from the storm surge. A tug boat was tied up to the dock and it was rolling up in down in the waves so much that I was getting seasick just watching. We had quite a storm and the land around us was taking quite a lot of abuse. Then in minutes I was back home eating hot cookies from the oven trying to warm up from our field trip. The storm was better observed from my window then out in it but it was an adventure.
No comments:
Post a Comment