NW Austin faces aftermath of winter storm

AUSTIN, Texas — After being at or below freezing for three consecutive days, temperatures in Austin are slowly starting to rise.

That means it’s back to reality for some folks.

A Northwest Austin neighborhood near the Oak Knoll – Great Hills area is starting to deal with the aftermath of the winter storm.

The number of downed trees just in that community was astonishing and, just standing in a couple of people’s backyards earlier today, hearing limbs snapping made it clear that Mother Nature isn’t done wreaking havoc there just yet.

“You just hear ‘Crack, crack, snap! Crack, crack, snap! All night long,” said northwest Austin homeowner Tom Meserole. “I woke up at three o’clock, and it was still continuing, so it was all night long. If you stay here long enough, you will hear it. That’s exactly what you hear.”

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Looking at Meserole’s front yard, you would consider him lucky but, once he guided us to his backyard overlooking a park filled with foliage and hundreds of trees, it was a different story.

“Lots of damage. It will take months to get this cleaned up,” Meserole said. “With the amount of damage that has been done, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it’s mid-summer before all the dead trees are gone.”

Although the sight of what looks like acres of crystal-dripped trees is breathtaking, for Meserole, knowing that most will likely not make it through this winter is a little bittersweet.

“This is still gonna be very pretty at the end of whenever we have it re-done, but it was a lot prettier before,” he said.

Much like Meserole, neighbor Currie Terry’s once “tropical paradise” of a backyard is no more.

“Almost all the cedar trees are down, and then one of the oak trees lost a lot of the big branches on our deck, so now the whole deck is covered with branches right now,” Terry said. “Our back used to be a tropical paradise; all the palm trees are dead!”

Still, with icy debris blanketing the streets, on top of some cars, and even homes without power, people are making the most of this situation.

“We have a big neighborhood community here, so this lady comes over, we do puzzles together,” said Terry. “If we bring wine, we can go have dinner down there, and we had a bunch of neighbors come over.”

CBS Austin spoke to some neighbors Thursday afternoon. They said they have been without power since as far back as Tuesday afternoon.