Posts Tagged ‘storm damage’
Much Quieter
Thank goodness it was much quieter last night than it was Tuesday night with all the stormy weather. There were two rounds of thunderstorms that actually disturbed the wee hours of Wednesday morning. It was around 1:00 a.m. that Delilah and I woke up to the rumbles of thunder. Then the rain and wind picked up and Delilah was barking ferociously at the flashes and booms.
Eventually, one of the strikes got close and the energy of the dog, of me, and of the storm all perked up considerably. I certainly didn’t need what came next. BANG! My least favorite aspect of a thunderstorm. The flash and boom were simultaneous and my first impression was that the lightning bolt hit our house or a tree right next to it.
I didn’t feel like the electricity of the lightning shocked me but the adrenaline shooting through my body was causing about the same reaction as though it had. In the darkness between flashes, I couldn’t see how severe the wind was so I relied on sound to help me decide whether any action was required or not.
The fact that there were suddenly emergency vehicle sirens wailing didn’t provide much comfort. I scouted every window for a possible view of emergency lights flashing but saw none. With no useful information gained, I decided to return to bed where I updated the radar views repeatedly while waiting for the storm to run its course.
By the time the second storm woke me, I was too sleepy to worry much. It looked less intense on the radar, the thundering was much less, and Delilah must have decided not to bother even barking. I fell right back to sleep.
When morning arrived and I got Delilah out for her first walk of the day, we quickly arrived at the first evidence of the intensity of the storm. The top of a tree with a 12-inch diameter trunk snapped clean and came down across one of our trails.
There were smaller branches down everywhere. A tree in our woods fell and got hung up on the trunk of another tree so it is now at a 45° angle.
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There was a branch down in the paddock under the willow tree and several branches from a cottonwood on the southern edge of our property flew all the way into the hay field.
I spent most of the morning cutting up and hauling branches away, all the while keeping an eye out for any sign of a direct hit from that closest lightning strike. Never spotted anything telling. A fuse blew in the controller of the electric fence. Imagine what it must have been like for the horses. They were remarkably mellow when we showed up to serve their morning feed.
The most mysterious feature was the large swath of tall grass in the drainage ditch that was pressed flat to the ground in the opposite direction of the water flow. Must have been a downburst of wind that flattened it that way.
Thankfully, there was never any hail that I heard. The lack of any residual shredding of leaves helps support that perception. As for rain, the gauges had barely an inch captured.
The part of the noisy night that sticks with me most is the intensity of that loud clap of thunder and how it was soon followed by sirens.
Sleeping last night was infinitely more restful.
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Trees Down
It’s certainly not the first time that I have written about fallen trees on our land and it definitely won’t be the last. The most recent two incidents were both completely unexpected and surprisingly large. They both came down after the stormy weather that dowsed us with over seven inches of rain in a very short time. I finally got around to dealing with them on Friday and upon close inspection of the job at hand discovered just how big they really were.
It was hard to cut them into pieces small enough to lift because they were so hefty. In fact, the initial effort didn’t result in removing any of the wood and branches, we just rearranged it into more compact piles.
The tree that was closer to the house and thankfully fell away from the structure now lies in the woods of my neighbor’s land. When I first noticed it, there was no evidence from the surrounding trees that anything had happened. There is a wall of leafy growth on the edge of forests that form a sort of walled barrier to the cathedral within, where the canopy of shade protects a spacious natural auditorium.
When I stepped through that outer shell to see how big that tree was, I was even more impressed with our luck that it didn’t lean toward our house, instead.
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At least this tree didn’t mess up any of the others around it.
The big oak, on the other hand, was merciless to many of the smaller trees in its path. It is heartbreaking to discover how many of the surrounding tree limbs have been snapped or bent over severely by the pressure of the falling beast.
When a big tree falls, you often lose more than just that one tree.
We are at no shortage of lumber to be turned into woodchips for our landscaping needs.
I’m hoping we might enjoy a break for a long while now before the next big tree makes its way back down to earth.
It’s not my favorite event in the natural world.
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Clearing Branches
For almost a year the branches lay in the section of woods beside our driveway, between the house and the barn. They were from a large oak tree that was already misshapen by previous storm damage. The lopsided section that had mostly survived the first incident many years before, tipped over about two stories high and required professional help to bring down the rest of the way.
I had the tree service do the minimum work of bringing the tree to the ground, but nothing more. We could do the rest.
Talk is cheap.
There was a lot of work left to be done, which is why it has taken almost a full year to come close to finishing the dispatching of all those logs and branches away from the scene. Yesterday, in the last days before the woods will become thick with green leaves, Cyndie and I finally cleaned up the area where the debris was spread.
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And we are not even done yet. There remain many standing trees with red paint on them which the DNR forester marked as threatening to the health of larger oaks around them.
Today’s inspiration is to cut those down and use the biggest sections to replace the creosote-soaked fence posts in our garden terrace walls. It will mean the wall won’t last as long since the tree trunks will rot sooner than the fence posts, but we think they will last long enough to allow collecting rocks for reinforcement over time.
I know cutting more trees down will create a lot more branches that need to be dealt with, but while we are in that mode I’m hoping momentum will keep progress flowing and not leave them laying in place for a whole year.
The challenge will be in splitting time between working on the garden terraces and clearing the new piles of branches created.
This will not be a one-day project, we know that much.
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Double Duty
This is becoming an all too frequent unwelcome occurrence. We had another tree succumb to high winds. This time it wasn’t in the woods, but right along the driveway during last Wednesday’s storm. When the look of winter arrived with a blast of 8 inches of heavy, wet blowing snow, it forced us into the double duty of cutting up the big pine across the driveway before I could plow.
Wind gusts were reaching 40 mph which turned out to be too much for the roots to hold that big beast.
Cyndie asked if we should use it for this year’s Christmas tree. I probably did a poor job of hiding my exasperation when I said she could if she was able to lift it.
Once we were in the middle of cutting it up and she discovered how big it really was, she understood my reluctance.
After I cut the trunk about halfway up, she pondered taking just the top portion. Again, I said that would be fine if she could lift it, knowing full well it was still too much tree.
Fortunately, the very top had split into two competing leaders, which made it an unappealing option when we reached a size that would be barely manageable.
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I offered her the alternative option of saving boughs for making a wreath or other decorative holiday arrangements. That met with her approval. No sense having all that wonderful pine scent going to waste.
Of course, this being a healthy live tree when it was pushed over, there was plenty of fresh, sticky sap to make a wonderful mess of her gloves and everything else around, including her hair by the time she was done moving things around.
An hour and a half later, I was able to start the plowing process, which was no picnic due to the stickiness of the snow. It kept sticking to the plow blade and hindered the winch’s ability to lift the blade. This being the first snowplowing of the season, I needed to establish an extra width by pushing the edges well past the end of the pavement to allow space for subsequent snow events.
I was moderately successful. We may have an opportunity to test this by tomorrow as we are due to get another comparable blast of wind and snow tonight.
Something tells me this is going to feel like a very long winter. Hopefully, I won’t be facing the double duty of lumberjack and plow driver all at the same time again.
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Storm Damage
By the looks of the driveway alone, up at the lake, it is obvious that there was some heavy rain. There is evidence of a flash flood of runoff that washed gravel away into the woods. Farther along on the property, we discovered that the big eagles’ nest had also succumbed to the deluge. There was debris of sticks and dead fish on the ground at the base of the tree. Looking up, the size of the structure had shrunk considerably.
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Still, the two youngsters remained perched, one on a branch above, and one on what was left of the nest. We occasionally hear them calling out to the adults who are the source of their meals. I would expect the stinky fish that landed below to eventually be picked up and delivered above again. It’s not like they’re past their expiration date or anything.
Getting the fish bodies up off the ground would make it a little easier to walk Delilah that direction. It takes a lot of muscle to steer her clear of trying to roll around in all the stench.
On a whim, I decided to be adventurous and take Delilah for an explore in the woods across the highway from our property. As soon as we made our way beyond the thicket of growth along the berm beside the road and got into the spacious forest beneath the spectacular canopy of the tall trees, I discovered the hazard of my decision.
All that rain seems to have unleashed a ferocious new batch of teeny mosquitos. They were unrelenting in their onslaught. I tried to keep moving to foil their attempts to land, but Delilah –lacking the exposed flesh I presented– didn’t share my urgency. She kept stopping to smell every enticing forest odor and, still on leash, frequently chose a path that had us at odds over which side of tree trunks to be on.
I had to cut our expedition short and set a course straight back to the bright sunlight of the roadway.
Things were much calmer when we got to the beach and I let her soak in the water while I stood on the sand taking a sunbath and listening to loons.
By that point, the storm damage was out of sight and out of mind. Almost the same for the chaos of the preceding week.
I will continue this course of therapy for a couple of days. It seems to be just what a doctor would order for what was ailing me.
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High Points
After work yesterday, Cyndie and I hopped in her car and drove up to the lake for the weekend. Leaving on a Thursday night makes for easy driving, in the absence of the typical weekend traffic headed north. Our route took us through some of the damage from last week’s storms that produced near-hurricane force winds and some baseball-sized hail.
It was fruitless to try to capture a representative photo of the large scope of broken trees for miles, but I snapped a few shots on my cell phone through the car window at highway speed.
It was a little easier to capture a sample of some building damage that hadn’t been covered up yet.
The extensive damage to trees was a really sad sight. It gave me a whole new perspective on the comparatively minor issues we are facing at home with a few dead or dying trees leaning across our trails. We’ve got it easy.
High point of the day for me yesterday was finding a neighboring farmer working our fields to finally bale some of the cut hay that has been left on the ground for weeks, repeatedly being rained on instead of properly drying out. The past week offered the longest stretch of dry days that I can recall so far this summer.
The second high point was getting a chance to watch portions of Stage 18 of the Tour de France on the subscription TV channels when we got here. At home, we only pick up what is publicly available through the airwaves, and bike racing coverage is minimal.
Two big mountain stages remain, today and tomorrow, and I am thrilled to be able to view all the drama as it happens.
Maybe it will be rainy here as the morning progresses so I don’t waste sunny lake time sitting indoors in front of the glowing screen getting my bike racing fix.
Honorable mention high point yesterday goes to the Coop’s pizza dinner we devoured when we got to Hayward. Oh, so delicious.
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Angry Skies
When I opened the door to take Delilah for a walk yesterday afternoon, the sound of endlessly recurring thunder from the southern horizon instantly notched up her excitement to 11. She wasn’t sure what to do with the fact it didn’t end. The rumbles just kept rolling over, one on top of the other.
Our assessment of the tipped tree across one of the trails in the woods was akin to the old “We will rebuild” memes with a lawn chair tipped over post-earthquake.
Removal of this hazard will barely require the chainsaw, but that is not a complaint. Not by any means. I am thrilled this is the worst we suffered. The bigger tree leaning from the right side of that image is from our neighbor’s property and it was blown over in a previous storm. I will probably tend to that at the same time I get around to dealing with the little one across the trail.
It is wet enough around here again that the mosquitoes have become a nuisance that will make lumberjacking a less pleasant endeavor. There may be a rudimentary trim that happens in the short term, leaving the ultimate cleanup for more inviting fall-like weather in a couple of months.
The chickens were undisturbed about the angry sky rumbling almost overhead and came out of the tall grass to be sociable when I stopped by to pick eggs.
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The cut fields from last weekend haven’t even been raked into windrows yet. They just haven’t caught a break this summer for getting enough consecutive rain-free days to allow the grass to dry sufficiently for baling. It’s really sad to watch. I would really be suffering emotionally if we were depending on it to feed horses.
I can’t imagine how all the others who need hay are dealing with it this summer.
By luck, our fields were missed by the round of cloudbursts that moved past just to our south yesterday, but chances don’t look promising for later today.
The angry skies seem to echo the vibrations coming from my news radio covering U.S. politics.
Boy, do I miss blue skies, dry days, sunshine, and benevolent leadership.
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Recovery Day
After an incredibly full day on Saturday, yesterday was a blink of doing next to nothing and seeing the minutes on the clock disappear just as fast. I don’t understand how that works.
The morning dawned with a gusting wind just ahead of a very dark thunderstorm, which forced Cyndie and me out of bed to race around picking up things that had been left outside at the end of the celebration evening. Once things were in order, Cyndie offered me the choice of going down to open the coop and feeding the chickens or going inside to feed the dog and cat.
I felt like feeding Delilah and ‘Nita required less thought, so chose that option. Seconds later, the rain began to pour down. Cyndie got soaked.
Two storms moved over us yesterday, but neither seemed particularly threatening. However, after the second one, Cyndie discovered that the top of one of our big oak trees had snapped off and was tipped down across the shortcut trail to the barn. I refused to take a picture because there was no way I could capture the actual detail of what happened. It’s too big. There’s no angle to show the actual size. It’s in the middle of so many other trees you can’t discern which leaves are which.
That never stops Cyndie.
Dealing with that new calamity will have to wait. Yesterday I squeezed in a nap and slowly chipped away at rediscovering order and routine from the aftermath of Saturday’s big event.
Let’s relive a couple of fine moments again…
I knew that we would continue straight on that road, but was all too happy to pause while the details were confirmed. At least I didn’t call for a wrong turn at this junction.
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It was a very happy birthday celebration and it was a great honor to be able to share it with my treasured friend, Paul Keiski.
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Ghost Leaves
On a walk through the woods with Delilah yesterday morning, my attention was grabbed by some disintegrating leaves that never fell from the tree. They looked like ghosts of leaves.
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Why did they not fall to the ground?
Especially in the face of some wind gusts that were strong enough to break loose a roof panel on our wood shed. Yesterday, there was dead calm in the morning, so I took advantage of the perfect weather to work on replacing the busted section.
Learning from experience, I added some cross supports that will better hold the overhanging side from flexing, should future winds blow from that same direction.
That simple structure, built to store split logs while they dry for a year, has provided multiple lessons from failure.
When it blew over in a storm, I figured out a way to secure it to the ground by stringing some old fence wire over the cross beams and running it through the eye of earth anchor augers in three strategic locations.
With the help of my friend, Mike Wilkus, who came to my rescue when re-assembling the shed after it had overturned, I learned how to improve the diagonal bracing to stabilize the overall structure.
It leaves me wondering what the next failure will be that might teach me yet another lesson in the great world of being an amateur builder.
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Reclaiming Peace
The days following a disruptive weather event can be a confusing mix, emotionally. The threat has lifted and calm ensues, but the anxiety adrenaline hangover lingers. We are lucky to have dodged any significant damage or loss of power, but the multiple inches of dirty snow/slush, speckled with innumerable broken branches, delay the feeling of relief we seek.
Thank goodness for our hills and valleys that break up the wind around here.
The open terrain to the west didn’t protect the overexposed, iced up power poles lining roadways.
We don’t have anything near that level of clean up facing us. That must have been a real shocker to come upon.
Some of the local hunters stopped by for permission to cross our property with their dogs in search of coyotes. A short time later, gunshots rang out.
I had watched as the group of hounds calmly traveled out of the neighboring corn field and into the woods, with a single hunter walking behind them. After they disappeared into the ravine beyond our property, we never saw another glimpse of them.
One of these days, I’m going to ask if I can tag along. It occurred to me yesterday, that in all our years here, I have never actually seen a coyote. I’m curious about the logistics of how they finally get proximity to shoot, and then how they find their way out of the woods while carrying their kill.
In less than three weeks, our annual participation in the World Labyrinth Day peace walk will be upon us. We are finding it difficult to envision how we might be ready.
It’s not just the peace pole that can’t stand up in the soft earth. The stones balanced at each turn spend more time toppled that upright with all the freezing and thawing going on.
Our exercise may just be to claim our peace with accepting things just as they are.
Windy, calm; wet, or dry.
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Relative Something 