The delights of metal roofing

I wish you could hear the sounds we heard the other day.

We had an ice storm the other day - which seems to be a bigger winter problem than snow around these parts. Anyway, so yesterday morning, our world was encased in ice - thin enough that it breaks when you walk on it, but thick enough that it's really loud when it does break.

Daytime highs have not been very high, but the sun was out. On our new metal roof, the ice melts first on the raised ridges (see picture in previous post), leaving wide sheets of ice in the low spots in between. As the sun shines down, these huge sheets of ice start to slide down. Sometimes it slowly slides down and curves to hang straight down, making it look like there are icy blinds hung off the front of our porch:

Other times it slides off en masse, in great avalanches that sound like thunder that send the poor dog running for cover.

But the weirdest sound is when one long sheet comes loose all at once. I'm not sure if I can describe it exactly. The long rectangle of ice slides down whole (making quite a rumble), until the weight of the free hanging end snaps off, and a slab the size of an oversized bed pillow falls to the deck and crashes into a thousand pieces. Meanwhile, the sheet is still sliding down fairly quickly, causing another slab to break off and shatter... followed by another slab, and another, in rapid succession.

You'd swear there was a locomotive coming through the back yard.

Here's what the aftermath looks like:

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