zhang.dianli, 4 months ago to random

#Wuhan #Snowpocalypse2024: #Aftermath¹

As I reported earlier, on February 4th, 2024 Wuhan was struck by #MotherNature (that bitch!) with a two-part #IceStorm followed by a thick (for here) blanket of #HeavySnow. And while #Wuhanren faced the disaster with their usual aplomb and resilience, giving Mother Nature the finger and insisting on going out and having fun, there was serious trouble lurking underneath the mantle of white.

Even the pictures I took pre-thaw on the 7th showed the degree of the disaster this was for local trees, with fallen boughs, many already dragged off of roadways, roofs, and even electrical wires by city workers, cut up into convenient sized chunks and piled neatly for later retrieval.

By the time the thaw began, yesterday, it was clear that no plant from tree sized to large shrub sized was unscathed by the weather. But the plant life of Wuhan is as sturdy and rebellious as are its citizens. As I left my home to perform an errand I found the trees striking back, shoving a raised middle finger into the face of Mother Nature!

I apologize for the quality of these photos, but they were taken in haste while I was carrying heavy objects. In addition it was mostly playing out well over my head, making it hard to get decent photos with a mere phone. Still, what they portray, I think, will make you proud of Wuhanese trees and their stalwart streak of resistance in the face of a seemingly-overwhelming assault by Mother Nature and the dying gasp of her General Winter!

(Mastadon users will have to click through to see all the pictures, but they're only missing a single one this time.)

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¹ As mentioned in the earlier Snowpocalypse post, the tone of this report is firmly tongue in cheek.

The first sign of the trees' striking back: springtime flowers. These were not there yesterday. They showed up within the last 24 hours, just in time for the first day of spring tomorrow! This is a better shot of the trees producing these flowers. Still not great, but clearer. If you look, you can see some of the vestiges of General Winter's assault on the trees in the form of little clumps of icy snow still sticking around in shaded parts of the tree.
Magnolia trees took the brunt of General Winter's assault, and many of the younger trees, strangely, were first to fall. The giant elders among the magnolias knew enough to use each other for support, their branches entwined with each other, thus saving them from the fate of the younger trees. Still, even with two limbs ripped off, the gory ends naked in the air, the younger magnolias are standing proudly, looking forward to their battle scars as they age.
Some trees are evergreen and produce flowers right about now, like the ones I first shared. Others, like these, are evergreen but push out a bunch of berries for birds to eat and spread the seeds of before blossoming. Still others, like plum trees (not depicted), go barren in winter, then push out blossoms before leaves in spring. The wiles of trees in their struggle for life are amazingly diverse.
Even larger shrubs did not escape unscathed by General Winter's attack, but they're bouncing back, growing little defiant fists of new leaves to wave in the air at Mother Nature.