Tree Splits Across First

While walking east on Newark Avenue on Sunday Morning, I make a right on Monmouth. I’m talking to my sister who lives in Nutley. She is telling me that she still has power, but Paramus where our mother and her children live was hit real bad, power outage, fallen tees

I don’t think we got anything like that in Jersey City. More inland is bad she says, even the Governor is without power. I think I heard something about that on the radio. I wasn’t paying close attention to the news this morning

I guess Jersey City is in a bubble by the River, I say with inappropriate jocularity. I reach the corner of First Street and just as I am saying how Jersey City was spared I see this. Holy crap, Suzanne. There’s a fallen tree across a street. Just like we were talking about, here it is.

 I was wrong, Jersey City was not spared.

Holy crap. Holy crap.

The irony of encountering a fallen tree moments after I testified to no such thing was not as shocking as the catastrophe itself. This was no mere downed branch, no loose limb. Practically half the tree, a large tributary of wood and leaves split off at the trunk, had toppled, probably been whole, growing there and lining our streets since WWII or Korea. It had fallen over cars but the branches seemed to prop up the long limb so it didn’t seem to cause any visible automobile damage.

The firemen had arrived, they were assessing the situation. They had chainsaws ready. I had been out for a while, walking around finding snow on pumpkin photo ops, I heard sirens all morning but I didn’t really pay them any mind. The leaves on the tree were still green. We are only a month into fall.

I seem to remember a brief flurry the day after the Mets lost the World Series to the Yankees in 2001, but nothing like this. I don’t remember any snow in October, says my sister, who is older than I. Later I would talk to mom. She was without power, depressed and frustrated about it. She has seen 91 Octobers, does not remember one with an ice storm. News reports called it a rare October snowstorm. Rare? How about first time ever! The leaves hadn’t even turned color, much less fallen. They’re as green as they were in August! It was 80 degrees two weeks ago! From 80 to below freezing in a fortnight.

Rare? No, not rare. The new order is here! We are experiencing the extreme weather events Al Gore warned us of in his excellent documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Weather patterns are not like they were when we were kids, not like they were even 10 years ago and 10 years ago they were more similar to when we were kids than they are to our post-Katrina atmosphere (and us with a Repulican controlling Trenton, Yikes! The poor and middle class are on our own!).

I passed by 24 hours later, the tree was still down (by nightfall it had been removed). I guess the firemen didn’t cut anything. The power lines were intertwined with the branches; dismantling the tree would have to be a painstaking operation. Maybe this was job for PSE&G. Nobody seems to have gotten hurt, the cars too seem oddly undamaged. How many times have we seen a tree, technically half a tree, split at the trunk, here in our fair city? Never up till now. Holy Crap!