It was the 1/2" or more ice and not the snow that took out the branches, however 2 neighbors lost a tree each… So spraying water on the trees in my area would have just added more ice and probably killing the tree… So as a tree hugger, you would have been hugging a dead tree… lol
Yes, disconnecting the power by throwing the giant light switch… lol
But it might be faster to disconnect the lines and pull them out of the branches… lol… It is a mess out there, I swear some of those large branches were aiming for the stupid power lines…
Just took this picture from basically a 2nd floor window (full basement), most of the branches are 12-15 footers, the one to the far left is a 20’ branch…
Yeah the 1st one snapped at 4am waking us and the cordless door bells, then they just started breaking for most of the rest of the day, I was out with the dogs when a few snapped, a couple startled me, I was out in the open safely away from the trees, but my reflex was duck down, look up and around to see which way I needed to run… When the power went out, I thought for sure it was the lines given way to the weight of the ice and branches, but they still holding on for dear life… 
Fun fact, one of those Pines was used as our Christmas tree one year when I was a kid… It was just under 8’ with the root ball on it…
I’m known for hugging dying trees. (After judicious radical prunning two came back!)
Voluminous flushing of the ice and snow, starting at the bottom up, washed the weight from the branches and they rose. Luckily we did not lose any.
But my hands froze. Should have donned dishwashingloves.
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It is pretty amazing how much weight those messenger cables (the steel cable) can carry before they give way. They’ll slice and dice those branches up post haste once they get up close and personal. They had a guy across the street, when a full sized tree was leaning its full weight on the run, running the biggest pole saw I ever witnessed chop up that tree. The line bounced around violently for a bit before settling back to its original height.
I can imagine the dogs reaction to those branches falling. They can feel a lot with their feet too and the whole ground shakes.
We grew up in WI, there are a lot of trees there. My oldest brother has lived in CO outside of Denver for 40+ years since and is now accustomed to that area. When he comes out east, he is astounded at the growth. He jokes that in CO, when a tree sprouts in a crack of the sidewalk, people gather around and sing praises about its right to survive. Here, we cut trees down routinely. The place is infested with them. I have more than 8 acres of woods now. A straight line wind came through 20 years ago and knocked down many of the older growth pines and oaks. Many still lay like pick up sticks in the woods. Certainly, the woods is not like it used to be but there is dense growth and it is well into recovery already. Chopping back the growth is a constant job or it will take over the lawn areas in a matter of years. It’s all a matter of perspective…
Dad had a 110 acres of land way back and 100 of it was all woods, that was mixed in with a lot of wooded land, and the under growth got so bad that they did a control burn of about 500 acres, it really helped the land to grow more new trees that were being choked out before and it got ride of all the brush that if caught on fire by a lighten strike or whatever could have burned much more due to the underbrush being a fuel for a fire…
So by doing the controlled fire it saved the mature trees that otherwise could have been damaged in an uncontrolled fire…
Most of the land was very big steep hills, like mini mountains lol, so would be dangerous to try and cut it out…
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4fr fence beside our tree frim 1978, right before we actually moved in. Have a feeling we’ll pay for January’s weather in February. AT least the power co spent time and money upgrading to new poles less affected by Ice and snow. One ice storm it took 1wk to get power back, breaker on the pile, power goes underground from the county road.
Until you have to deal with it, most people do not understand how much work it is to properly maintain a wooded area. Yes, nature can and will go through the normal course of maturation, die back and rebirth but that takes decades and may not be how you like to enjoy the property- hunting for example. Plus like you mentioned, the fire danger.
The bane of my existence are vines. We have all kinds of them, some benign and others, like poison ivy, are a royal PITA. I have to be super careful about maintenance because there are wetlands to contend with that are protected. The authorities responsible for enforcing rules get bent out of shape even clearing away fallen trees even though the function of the wetlands are impacted by them. That is, if they find out… 
The colonial era stage coach road passed through my property, connecting Boston to points north in New Hampshire. It is still evident if you know what to look for and I try to keep it from getting obscured by growth.
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We used to have power outages until a derecho passed through in 2012. Power was out for over a week for us. The storm knocked down a lot of branches and trees. The power company came through the neighborhoods with power on poles and removed the remaining branches that could be a problem in the future. Power outages since then have been few and short.
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i’m intrigued by historical gems like that!
We visited my father in law’s birthplace in Northern Germany during 2003. We spent almost 2 weeks there, and did a lot of tourist things. One of them was a walk on an old stone road north of his village. It was straight, flat, and in good condition. It was also built by the Roman army about 2000 years ago.
Not far past the end of dads old land only accessible through our land (surrounded by mini mountains on 3 sides) was a very old log cabin with the kitchen off the back porch, estimated to have been built in the 1,700’s maybe even older the way it was built…
It was a large one room cabin with a large ish back porch, then what we thought would have been, the kitchen, Nothing was level and would not be on any type of registry, probably only a small amount of people still alive even knows it’s there… Looked like it had been abandoned for over 150 years now, wish I could get pictures of it… Can’t even see it from overhead due to the trees (even in winter)… No remains of the doors or windows…
The build looked similar to this one that was built in mid 1,600’s in another state, but no where in as good of shape as the one pictured, the floors were all slanted and it was probably 18" to 24" off the ground, no foundation (on pillars)… No electric, no water other than a dry creek close by, and no well that we ever found…
The red dot is about where the cabin is…
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And probably doesn’t have 4-40 ton vehicles driving on it daily.
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We bought ours with that feature, salesman said don’t depend on it. It was a drizzely day and the car blew threw the cardboard display it was supposed to stop at during a salesman training to get familiar with all the features.
Maybe late 1700s. Spanish explorers were there in the 1500s but were just passing through. English settlers arrived in the late 1700s.
There were many homes built in the 1600’s in the US…
This house was built in1637…
All I’m saying is that there could have been some family’s that went out on their own, a few “explorers” that wandered off and or stayed behind…Possibly never on any record…
There are very few wood structure homes built before 1800 still standing. I know of a few, but most have rotted away.
The oldest one in The US (located in Gloucester County, NJ) is at least 383 years old. The Swedes–who first colonized this part of NJ–really knew how to build houses!
The biggest problem with these older homes is the foundation and how close the wood frame is to the ground. Most were built just a few inches above ground level. And those field stone foundations had a lot of problems.
The farm where I used to get my vegetables has a farm house that was built circa 1750. A few years ago, they noticed that one of their exterior walls had begun showing a lot of deep cracks. They called-in a carpenter who discovered that a short section of the old fieldstone foundation was not squarely underneath the joists that it was supposed to be supporting, and a short section wasn’t supported at all.
They had to call-in a masonry specialist who corrected a very old construction error by building a new (short distance) foundation to properly support things. One of the workmen theorized that the original masons must have been intoxicated, because they did not keep the foundation straight. Another workman said, “This house is only standing out of habit”.
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Your wordrunk was censored?
Love the “habit” remark.