Wind Storm damage

A couple of weeks ago, we had hurricane force winds here in Utah. It caused a lot of damage, mostly by downed trees. We lost power for 2 days, I missed a day of work because my office was out of power, and school was cancelled for two days because so many schools didn't have power. On Wed. night, the winds woke me up and kept me up all night. Thur. morning, the power went out about 7am, and we didn't get it back on until Friday noon. I can't describe how loud and crazy the winds were. It was amazing. We watched the west side of our fence fly away piece by piece, and at 10 am, a HUGE tree fell in our backyard. It actually fell on Kylo! But he was ok. I had to crawl in under downed cords(I know, don't tell me) to get him out. Even though we already had lost power, the tree took down all the cords on a pole in our backyard. As a result, we were out of power for a while longer than others in our neighborhood. I also didn't have phone or internet until Tue. the following week!


Here is a pic of people clearing out the limbs from the tree. The Sunday after it happened we were predicted to have winds again that night. House after house had piles and piles of limbs all over, and they warned that they would become projectile in the wind. Soooo, in order to prevent that, church was cancelled all over our area and we were encouraged to go out and help the community clean up. And we did! It was amazing to see everyone working together. Michaela and Payden helped out at a few houses. Because of the two little girls, I could only help at my house. As we were piling the limbs out front, different people came with trailors and trucks, one after another, to take loads to the dump. They didn't care whose tree limbs they took, they just drove around until they had a full load, then took it to the dump. On their own dime and their own time. Truly a community effort. It was heartwearming. I couldn't think of a better way to spend a Sunday!




Here is a pic of the tree after the power company cut it apart to get to the cord underneath it.

And here is the tree. I estimated it to be about 60'. Not sure though. It was huge. I have a pretty big backyard, and it took up the whole length of it. It took out a smaller tree with it, it is under it. You can just see Kylo's dog house to the left. I honestly don't know how he survived!

Driving around town was interesting after the storm. Many stores lost their signs and marquees, there were huge trees down at every other house, all over the roads. Debris was everywhere; in fact the trains and front runner were shut down for a while due to the debris on the tracks. It really looked like a tornado had gone through. People's roofs were missing shingles (we had to pick up many of them in our yard!) and other damage was visible everywhere. Made for an interesting weekend!