You probably heard that we had a Nor'easter move through over the weekend. They'd forecasted up to a foot of snow in our area, and while we did get a few inches the temp swung about wildly enough that it alternated with rain and sleet and didn't really accumulate for long.

And then the wind kicked in ...

We had winds up to 45mph, maybe more but that's the peak I noticed on our home weather station. It howled incessantly all Sunday night, punctuated by the occasional and inexplicable banging sound against the house (which we can never figure out). Branches broke off everywhere -- people's yards look like a mini-tornado or a hurricane passed through.

Not only were branches and even whole trees broken off in the gale, some trees were just blown over, roots and all. We have a twenty foot or so tall tree near our front yard that was just blown over, the ground buckled up like a bad bone break underneath. I drove to work the next morning and a huge birch was leaning forty-five degrees across the road, held in place by only power and telephone lines. This was about ten minutes after our power was restored: another equally large tree had broken the power line a mere 40 feet further down the road, been cut down by the crews, and the power line repaired. The other tree must have fallen over as they drove away.

Our power was only out for a couple hours. They still haven't restored power to all of Vermont and parts of Canada, both of which appears to have suffered much more snow and wind damage.

For the weather buffs, here's a snapshot of our barometric pressure for the month of April. Can you spot the Nor'easter?