THE BEST LAID PLANS OF RED

     I had planned to do a post on summer solstice. I like special days and to me the summer solstice is a special day. I planned to get some photos to show our long day. I'm always impressed when the sun sets after 10 PM. Today the sun rose at 5:13 Am and sets at 10:00PM for a total of 16 hours and 47 minutes of sun.

    However my special post on summer solstice was not to be.

    Tuesday evening a vicious windstorm hit us again with gusts to 112 kph (70 mph) . Again there was damage done in my city. Many trees were blown down and this time buildings were damaged and about 5% of the city still does not have power. Windows were blown out in a few buildings and roof damage occurred . Some roofs were blown right off.

    Fortunately I did not have any damage. Across the street a large spruce came down and landed on a house. A large poplar branch 25 cm (10 in) diameter fell at the school and the same thing happened half a block away. Most schools were closed yesterday. 

   So this is the second major clean up this spring.

WIND STORM

     A week ago we had a wind storm and some rain with it.  The wind blew all day but the highest winds were from 4:00PM to 6:00 PM.  We had gusts up to 100kph which for this location is a very strong wind.

    Needless to say there was damage. There was little damage to structures but trees suffered a lot of damage. Some trees blew down in the residential areas. The dumb trees chose power lines to fall on. As a result, there were some power outages.

   Out in the bush the story was different. Quite a few trees went down. Trees with some defects in the trunk broke off above the ground. Some trees were completely uprooted. It's amazing how large the root balls can be. The spruce seemed to suffer more damage but many poplars blew down as well.

   This is the worst wind storm I've seen since I moved here in 1969. There was a windstorm in 1978 that took the tops off many spruce trees.

    The city has worked hard to clean things up. First, they made sure that the roads were cleared. Then they cleaned off paved paths and then shale and gravel paths. Later on they will come back and haul away the debris.

My Love of Thunderstorms

     I really love a good old thunder storm. I like the thunder lightning, wind and rain. I like Eddie Rabbit's "I Love a Rainy Night."


    Today my love of thunderstorms cooled off a bit. I had some damage as the result of a severe thunderstorm this afternoon.


     We had wind  and thunderstorm storm warnings today. You could see a build up starting around noon. About 2:30 PM the storm broke . There was lots of thunder, lightning, rain and wind. Rain , thunder and lightning weren't spectacular. However, the wind was spectacular. I don't know the wind speed but the trees really rocked.


     All at once I heard a good bang outside and I knew that something had been hit. I ran to my front window to see a large part of my birch tree had blown down on the car and the back window was smashed out. So a few fast scrambles to get the car under the car port and then the rest of the afternoon talking to insurance. By 5:00PM most of the business with insurance had been done and tomorrow action will take place.

A 6 or 7 m (20ft) chunk of birch tree.

Cleaned the back window out pretty neatly.

My birch that is in the process of its last days.

     Things like this are stressful but I have to stop and say, "Nobody was hurt. All people are safe." This storm was not nearly as severe as the one that took place in the mid west and eastern states. Our power didn't go off. 


    My daughter lives near Chicago and she had a large chunk of her maple tree come down. It missed everything...house, power line, fence, neighbor's house. It didn't even knock the bird bath over. Was she lucky!


     Now just for this afternoon my enjoyment of thunderstorms was cooled . Tomorrow I will look for thunderstorms again.