Water and Ice

A few days ago we escaped a classic New England ice storm by perhaps 200 vertical feet. Others to the west, north, and east at higher elevations still have no power, and parts of northern New England have been declared disaster areas by both state and federal agencies.
Perhaps one quarter of our Christmases are white, and New England winters often confound the best forecasters, including the woolly bear caterpillar, whose ratio of black and brown often augurs our winters, provided one can sort out if it's black, or brown, that means a mild or severe winter comes.
We escaped the ice, but not the rain, a deluge that approached virtual flood stage in our river valley and that despite official insufficiency of flood nevertheless flowed into low fields inundating dormant crops, such as the above nursery trees.
After the rain and its following cold front, temperatures dropped rapidly into the low teens, literally freezing a high-water mark onto the trees, and leaving skirts and dangling candles of ice as the waters receded overnight.