Long arm of Sandy reached far western Maryland

Some 300 miles inland from where Sandy made landfall on Oct. 29, it toppled a number of trees around Deep Creek Lake in western Maryland, as Hugh and Dolores discovered when they went to check on their lakeside retreat the following week. Two apple trees came down just behind their unit at Arrowhead.

The combination of Hurricane Sandy and a winter storm moving in from the west dumped more than two feet of snow on the area, and Hugh surmises it was the weight of the wet snow more than the wind that caused the trees to fall.

Hugh writes: "I do not know for sure, but have always assumed that the apples were the remnants of an orchard that was here when the lake was originally flooded. That was in 1925. If that is where they came from, they were very old apple trees and probably near the end of their life cycle. In any case, we get a better view of the water in the summer now. The house is undamaged and everything is in good shape."