I hard those "Poppin Trees" here in southern mid-TN back in 1998. We had an ice storm on Christmas Eve. We were without electricity for 7 days & temps did not get above freezing. We had a gas heater we could run without electricity & cook on a gas stove, which we could manually light so made it pretty well except for Water. I am on a private spring for water & use a shallow well pump to bring it to the house, a distance of around 400 feet but not much lift. I would take a bucket to the spring & lift off the cover & dip drinking & cooking water. To flush the toilets it was closer to go to the creek with a 5-gallon bucket & dip up water. My daughter & Son-in-law had gone to do some last minute Christmas shopping that day & left our 8 months old granddaughter with us. We also had my 78-year-old mother in the house with us. We all survived. My Daughter &SIL lived about 25-30 miles from us & had planned on coming that night to pick up their "Baby", but all the roads were closed, we kept her all week. Every time I stepped out of the house I could hear numerous trees cracking all around when the thaw finally came I was utterly amazed there was a single one left standing. About 100 ft from my house a large & tall Wild Cherry tree had bent over till its top was nearly touching the ground but did not break. Following spring it was loaded with wild cherries as it normally was but I could not get to them to pick them. That year I simply walked out there & stood on the ground & picked a lot of those little cherries. My Wife made some Cherry preserves & it was delicious.
The coldest I can recall here in my area was back in the late 1950s when it got down to -15F one night. That day a man came by who had run off the road & asked me to pull him out with my tractor, a B JD, which I did. I had been having a problem with one of the radiator hoses leaking & had not got it replaced yet so had drained the antifreeze & just put water in for this short task. The problem was when I brought it back into the shed I forgot to drain it. Next morning it hit me & it was frozen solid. We covered it up & put a heat lamp on it & was still 3-4 days before it even began to drip a bit. Absolutely Amazing but it did not crack a single piece of cast iron in the block or anywhere.
