Hey all I haven't been active in this, or any forums, for the last few years but I thought I might post a recent event I managed to capture on my security cameras you might find mildly entertaining. We had a pretty wild wind storm the other day that lead to me collecting a bit of firewood. Here is the video footage from our cameras: And my net results:
That reminds me of kind of a funny thing that happened to my brother in law a few years ago. We had a terrible ice and snow storm, and trees and big limbs were snapping like twigs from the weight, and we live on a dirt road about two miles from the pavement. The road is tree lined the whole way and he and his son decided to cut their way out to the pavement one night and started at about 10 pm, there were limbs and trees down everywhere. They cut almost to the highway, and ran in to a huge tree that was down across the road and gave up for the night, but while they were cutting their way out, trees and limbs were still falling behind them, and it took them another hour or better to cut their way back home. If you think about it, it was a bit foolish and dangerous to try it. It's a wonder they didn't get hit by a falling limb, and some of the limbs were pretty large that fell. We had to listen to huge limbs breaking all night long, and could hear them for hundreds of yards. I never seen anything like it. Needless to say, none of us went to work the next day, as we still couldn't get out to the pavement.
I was "waiting for it" a tree to topple. Saw similar footage on the weather channel the other morning. Where are you located Lumber-Jack ?
We had wind here yesterday that was as strong as I recall in a long time. Steady. I need to go to my land check my trails and trees. Later!
Cool story, yeah, not wise to start the clean up until all the winds have subsided. I was outside during this wind storm and while I was in the back yard I literally had to run and hide from some roofing material that peeled off my neighbor's shed. My other neighbor's yard is full of large trees and I was just over there this morning and he was showing me cracks in the soil around the roots. Most of his trees are close enough to hit my house if they decided to fall that way, but this time the big gusts were blowing towards his house.
When I move here, 30 plus years ago, I chose a building site that had some nice trees, big oaks for shade, but they all finally died off and I didn't plant anymore, which I kind of regretted but I have seen so many nice trees in the last few years that uprooted during strong winds, and some fell on friend's houses, that I kind of like it, now, that I don't have to worry about a tree falling on my house or vehicles. I have seen some nice trees that fell down in recent years that I just wouldn't have figured to do so. Two were in my yard away from the house, and I thought they were healthy, but after the blow down, I discovered that the root system was rotted, even though the trees look good above ground.
I didn't realize until the past few years and walking my land instead of hunting something that trees just friggin die all the time. Winds blow them down, ants get them, rot gets them, disease, fungus, blight, old age... they just die. I haven't cut big trees but I have my eye on them, watching for ill health.
Ice storms are horrible, we had a bad one in 91. Heard trees coming down for hours. Power was out for weeks. Hunting was tough for several years after that. Not something you ever forget.
Yes, in the incident above, I told about, we ended up being without power for 11 days, zero degree weather. Sure glad I had a wood stove, then. At first I would enter a room and flip the light switch and nothing would come on of course, it was just a habit. Then by 11 days later when we got power back, I would walk in a room and forget to turn the light on. I had pretty much got acclimated to having no electric lights.
I remember doing the exact same thing. I was 17 then, bought my first generator when I was around 25 because of that storm. I’ve owned one since. Everything revolved around our wood stove during that storm, from melting snow for bath water to cooking.
Nobody on my street got hurt but the tree that fell across the street took the lady's power line down with it and the electricity was arcing a little bit against her metal roof under the tree. That was my biggest concern that her house might burn down. I called the electric company and called the lady at her work so she could come home and deal with it right away. I also got a hold of the other neighbors at work so they could deal with their trees too. Three neighbors on my street had trees fall on their roofs all in the space of about 5 minutes.
In all honesty I had to watch the video twice. The first time I was fixated and drooling over the truck.
