December 17, 2012 - This Wind

This Wind

This wind it howls, this wind it moans, 
A mournful eerie sound.

This wind gathers fallen autumnal leaves, 
Just to dash them to the ground.....Ray Clune


We had an early morning wind storm, with 40 MPH sustained winds and gusts of 55 MPH.  Our electricity was off for about four hours, and my son called and said they were still having a brown out on the other side of town.  We didn't have any damage, at least none that I've discovered so far, but our next door neighbor's pine tree went down on her neighbor's new chain link fence.  My daughter manages a manufactured home park about ten miles from our place, and it sustained a lot of damage.

Tree down next door.  Too bad it wasn't her half dead walnut tree that hangs over my garden.


No damage at our house, but oh....what a mess of pine branches we have to clean up!  At least it's warm today.  Instead of our normal low 30s December temperatures, it's about 50 and sunny.  We'll wait until tomorrow though, as the wind advisory is in effect until 4 PM today.


Views of damage around my daughter's place................

 She said lots of homes had shingles ripped off.


 She noticed some trees were down.


The park is littered with shingles.

Daughter's shingles are intact, but her flag pole is down.  It looks like quite a few people lost attached structures, like patio covers and carports.  

We've had worse wind storms in this area.  They are quite common in the spring, but I don't remember ever having this kind of weather in December.  


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Later in the morning....

We just took a drive around our neighborhood, and there was quite a bit of damage.  We saw at least a dozen large trees uprooted, fences down and shingles off of the houses just in about a six block radius of our home, so we really lucked out with the downed pine branches.  Just one house down from us, at the corner, there is a large tree across the road.  The neighbor's tree (shown in the first picture) was a huge one, the top of it is clear over at the edge of the next street up.  Luckily, it fell between two houses, so the only damage was to the chain link fence.



At least two nearby neighbors had trees toppling on their vehicles.

I went out front to begin cleaning up the pine branches and pine cones.  I filled the (empty) big garbage can and didn't even make a dent in the mess, which included branches from trees not even belonging to us.  It was much worse than it looks in the photo.  The wind was still strong, and cold.  I could only take about 30 minutes of it before giving up.

*From our local newspaper:  The National Weather Service in Pendleton says winds peaked in the Tri-Cities between 4 a.m. and 9 a.m. The highest was a 83 mph gust recorded near Horn Rapids at 5 a.m., but there was a 63 mph gust just west of Kennewick at 4:46 a.m. and a 70 mph gust recorded at the Tri-Cities Airport at 5:15 a.m., said Dennis Hull, a meteorologist.  Gusts of more than 100 mph were recorded on Rattlesnake Mountain.


23 comments:

  1. I'm glad you are OK. I've been shocked at the new house on how good our electricity is. We didn't lose it in Sandy nor did we lose it in either of the microbursts that we have had here. In fact we have never lost it for more than a short brown out. We so would have lost power at my last house so many times. My old neighbor lost it for days last year.

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    1. We haven't had an outage here in years. Of course, I've spent most winters away, but I can't remember the last time we had a power outage. We had them all the time in AZ, which made me happy our kitchen stove was gas. Here everything is electric. I can understand how it happened after seeing the huge tree,just two doors down, on the ground with the power lines under it. I'm surprised we got it restored so soon, as the power company is still out there working.

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  2. Wow! That is crazy. So glad there was no major damage to your home or property.

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    1. Rachel, after we drove around and saw how much damage there was in the area, I felt very lucky! (I've updated the blog to quote the newspaper on just how strong the gusts were).

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  3. Holy cow, I didn't even hear about that on the news. Amazing how crazy the weather can get. those are some hurricane force winds there. Yikes! Glad you are ok!!

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    1. 1st. Man, we've been there, done that before. It seems like this happens about once a year, but not always causing this much damage. We've lost lots of shingles on two occasions, and the big maple tree back in 2008, but knock on wood it hasn't been worse. I always worry about our three big pine trees and the neighbor's huge sycamores. Any one or all could hit our house.

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  4. Glad that you are okay and escaped a lot of the damage that others had. We have had grey days! Can't wait for a sunny day! Nancy

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    1. Nancy, our forecast is for snow on Wednesday, so we've had heavy rain,warm sun, freezing nights and strong winds so far this month. Snow would make it a home run for the month!

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  5. Glad you and your familiy are o.k. Granny! :-)

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    1. We're quite used to the high winds here, Spiderjohn. I just hope our big pines never topple.

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  6. wow that was some nasty wind! glad to hear that your families homes are all okay!

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  7. Hey Annie

    Glad to see you survived.

    We're having some rain out here in California, so I guess the bad weather is contagious. It's not as bad out here as it is where you are though. I had to go out in the rain yesterday for my doctor's appointment, and it was a bit windy, but nothing like what you went through.

    Maybe you can get cleaning up tomorrow, when it hopefully won't be so windy.

    Have a great rest of the day!

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    1. Z, we still don't have it all cleaned up, as there's no place to put it. We've filled the garbage can, which doesn't even make a dent in the mess. We'll just have to tr to get it all into a big pile and get rid of it a little bit at a time on garbage days.

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  8. That's crazy!! I'm glad you fared well in the storm, I bet you are still cleaning up pinecones and debris!

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    1. Erin, we've had more pine mess this year than ever before. I'm wondering if the trees are sick, the way they are losing branches.

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  9. Goodness gracious that is some serious wind. I am glad you had no damage, but sorry to hear about your daughters place. Just curious, but did you guys have a lot of rain in the month preceding this wind storm? Many times trees that normally wouldn't go down in 40 to 50 mph winds will topple right over in wet mushy ground.

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    1. Kris, the daughter only lost a flag pole. Some of her tenants had rather sever damage though. No, we've not had much rain, but we have soft sandy soil and most of the trees that came down were fir trees, heavy with full branches. They are also very shallow rooted, unlike the deciduous trees.

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  10. I'm glad you didn't have any damage!

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    1. Me too, Vanessa, but I wish I had a younger body that could get the mess cleaned up faster!

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  11. Eesh - a feeling I know all too well. Glad no one was hurt!

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    1. David, we're still trying to get rid of the mess, a little each week. I finally just piled it all up in a corner, and we load what we can into the garbage each Thursday. Certainly not as bad as the neighbor, who had two more big pines cut down, besides the one that blew down. I guess they were afraid they'd drop onto the neighboring house in a future wind storm. A tree company cut them and chipped all the branches, but left the 3 big trunks for the neighbor to cut and use. It's a LOT of wood!

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  12. Very good post. I will be going through some
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