Storm

Eryn and I spent part of the last two days riding around the neighborhood checking out the storm damage. I promised her when I got back from RAGBRAI we'd try the tagalong, and she loves it. We rode a little more than eight miles yesterday and another six today, and only stopped because I said I was worn out from the exercise and heat. Grandpa has the pictures - set 1, set 2, set 3.

During our ride, we saw a lot of downed trees, though none as big as the willow section that went down directly behind us, a tipped over porta toilet, and one extremely large branch that had landed square on the hood, windshield and roof of a new pickup that had been parked in a driveway. Our only damage was a great big willow branch landing on Pooteewheet's green peppers. They seem to have survived, and I turned the willow into a number of pieces of firewood for fall marshmallow roasts.

One of our two immediate neighbors, however, lost some nice fruit trees because the dead trees he hadn't cut down yet topped during the storm and the large chunks landed on top of the smaller fruit trees. Doh! I thought it was cool that I had before and after pictures, but only because I had a weird post about a Bhodi Tree from three years ago. Pooteewheet graciously tried to replicate the angle for me.

Before:


After:


On our way to the carousel at Como today to see Grandpa (yep - I was home on Monday, but only because Grandpa and Grandma gave my wife a killer case of something that looks like Norwalk, although that diagnosis came from my sister, who's Norwalk paranoid since she and my niece came down with it...I think she just needs to believe other people are as careless with their poop as she is), Eryn and I stopped by Mean Mr. Mustard's house to make sure everything looks o.k. We couldn't get a good angle on the complete yard, but it looked whole, and so did the neighbors' houses - so that's probably a good sign. Como Park, not so far away, did not fare nearly as well. It's amazing that none of the structures up there were damaged. MNSpeak has a good series of links to some pictures. We did see one house under several blue drops that had been clobbered, not too far from the park - but given that all the trees in the park look like they had exploded, that seemed minimal.

This is the far side of the picnic area where all the bark had been ripped from the trees.


They were already clearing away lots of the wood and had sections sealed off as dangerous. This is near where my company has their corporate picnic each year. Next year there will be a lot less shade - many of the big trees were gone, or shredded and being taken down, and just the little, bendable trees were left.


In the same area. You can see what I mean about the bendable trees.






The general picnic area (as opposed to the sort of huge corporate area with baseball diamonds) seemed to get hit the worst. The picture below was typical of much of the area, and in the picture above if you look deeper into the picture you can see more trees down in the background.