The Day After

Photo by Rick Showalter.

Tornadoes. Floods. Mud slides. Ice storms. Kentucky has endured its share of catastrophic weather in the past two months. 

This week, it was Winter Storm Landon striking some of the same areas of Western Kentucky devastated by the December 10 tornadoes and then moving into north central Kentucky. Throughout the commonwealth, homeowners prepared for potential widespread and lengthy power outages. Many of us had flashbacks to 2009 when a devastating ice storm left more than half a million Kentucky homes and businesses without power for a week or more. Thankfully, Landon didn’t land quite the same punch.

Here in Scott County we were, once again, largely spared. We spent a day waiting for the ice to accumulate and the lights to flicker, but by nightfall we were beginning to breathe a little easier. Snow and a bitter wind continued into the next day as temperatures dropped into the teens.

And then, late this afternoon, the sun came out. I pulled on some warm clothes and headed out with the dog. I walked to the top of the hill…and found myself in a magical crystal kingdom.

The sun was backlighting the patches of woodland trees that dot the neighborhood, each limb and twig still fully encased in ice. The reflected light was blinding. Prismatic color—pink, green, yellow, blue—sparkled and bounced in a happy jig. It seemed someone had draped the trees with thousands of the tiniest twinkling Christmas lights. A photo couldn’t do it justice, and it saddens me that I couldn’t find a way to share it with you other than through my feeble words.

It has already been a challenging winter. Record-breaking storms have battered numerous areas of the country. The omicron variant has sent many of us back to our safe rooms. Friends and relatives have lost loved ones—too many loved ones. I fear what the rest of the year has to offer.
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But, for an hour, Lucy and I walked amid the sparkling trees beneath the blue sky, completely enraptured by the scene around us. These are the moments I will pocket for now and pull out when I need reassurance of better days ahead.

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Scenes from winter storm landon

​Winter Storm Kenan January 28, 2022