The night of breaking trees

This is the second time I’ve written the headline “The night of breaking trees” for a newspaper. The first was for a story in The Olympian about an ice storm that hit in the final week of 1996. It worked then, and after talking to Lake Kokanee-area residents Charles and Frieda Osborne last week, it works for this story in this edition of this newspaper.

Sometimes 25-year-old headlines don’t age.

The ill-effects of last week’s storm were multiple and freakish: Trees toppled across U.S. Highway 101 north of Eldon “like matchsticks,” according to the woman behind the counter at t...