Yup, had a surprising gale of winds on the leading edge of the storm yesterday.
Knocked down the lowest branch on one of my front yard's trees. It hit the neighbor's daughter's van, which was parked in the street. She lucked out, it suffered no damage to the windshield or the hood (but broke the plastic bug-catcher/glare deflector thingie). In addition, a tree in the yard of the house two houses down from me had another set of branches come down; these were high up. It looks like it damaged that house's roof, and then blew down onto the next-door neighbor's roof, leaving a big piece up there (along with a hole) and then another big, leafy piece bridging their driveway and our two yards.
Furthermore, the tree in my yard took out that next-door neighbor's cable; a bunch of the neighbors were standing out in the rain stopping traffic from stringing themselves up on the waist-level cable line as it was dangling over the road. Eventually, somebody had the smart idea of dragging a big, but manageable tree branch to block the lane of traffic that the fallen tree itself wasn't blocking. More seriously, half a block down at the intersection, there was a main power line (pre-transformer -- one of the bare aluminum ones) broken. Again, we dragged loose 7-foot tree branches to box off the area until a police officer arrived to set up cones.
Finally, and most shockingly, two of the very large (like, 4-5' diameter) trees in the public-owned property across the street look like they were struck by lightning. Both sheared very large sections off down to the ground, and showed signs of char, and one smelled very strongly of burning wood. Fortunately, that land is undeveloped, and neither fell towards the little old lady's house next to the not-park.
Once the thunder and the worst of the rain had passed, we were all out in the drizzling rain dragging stuff out of the street, picking up the blown-down shingling, cutting free/apart the largest treefalls, and stacking them out of the way. It was a nice collaborative effort.
I got outside to hack one of the two big piles apart into more easily disposable sizes of brush. I figure another half hour to 45 minutes each of labor in the morning and evening ought to get me finished up. I'd forgotten how heavy my axe is, lol.
_________________ "Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee "... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades
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