LINCOLN — Winter Storm Quiana, which brought heavy snowfall and damaging winds to the Midwest over the weekend, reached the Green Mountains on Sunday.
In a particularly windy corner of Lincoln, the storm’s bluster tore the roof off of Mary Arbuckle’s horse shed.
“It was very dramatic,” Arbuckle told the Independent in a Monday morning email. “It flew 100 feet across a field. Luckily it didn’t hit my ponies.”
Arbuckle, who is executive director of Northeast Addison Television in Bristol, had just finished filming those ponies.
“I missed the flying roof by about a minute,” she said.
She didn’t see the roof come off the structure, but she did notice the noise.
“I heard a thumping sound, then looked out the window to see ponies running around the field,” she said.
Then she noticed the roof was gone.
“I live in an open field with ridges all around, and the wind just roars across the field,” Arbuckle said.
But Sunday’s extreme weather complicated even the simplest chores.
Before her shed roof blew away, Arbuckle had been trying to clear some snow on her property when the wind caught her large plastic shovel and turned it into a sail.
“It kept catching the wind,” she said. “I grappled with it but me and my shovel were being pushed toward the barn.”
Then she had trouble feeding her ponies.
“It was a real battle just to get to the barn to get the hay, and then get the hay to the ponies in the field,” she explained. “I normally carry the hay bales on a sled but the sled blew away, along with the hay. Winter drama,” she added. “Kind of funny.”
Storm gusts as high as 74 mph were reported across the upper Midwest and the Northeast, and nearly 700,000 people lost power, according to the Weather Channel. One location in West Virginia reported a wind gust of 88 mph.
Elsewhere in Vermont, Springfield reported 0.05 inches of ice and Burlington reported 0.03 inches.
A wind advisory for Addison County remained in effect until Monday at 7 p.m.
Reach Christopher Ross at [email protected].
THE METAL ROOF from Mary Arbuckle’s horse shed lies mangled in the snow after sailing 100 feet across her Lincoln property on Sunday. Winter Storm Quiana sewed chaos across the upper Midwest and the Northeast over the weekend. The National Weather Service issued a wind advisory for Addison County until Monday evening.
Photo courtesy of Mary Arbuckle