Scariest night ever…

Whew, finally power and internet is back!  Just when I was about to head to town for more fuel they energized my area.  No more bumming it at hotels for this guy!

Whew, finally power and internet is back!  Just when I was about to head to town for more fuel they energized my area.  No more bumming it at hotels for this guy!

How many days without power? After the snow, we went 5.75 days, and that’s a record for us.

Hope the repairs went well NowhereMan, these storms have been so brutal and stressful for everyone.  ThereÂ’s 6 homes with huge trees on them you can see from Highway 9 on the way from Boulder Creek to Scotts Valley, and those are just the ones you can see from the road that happened during the wind that came through last Wednesday - 65mph gusts downtown BC.  My poor shipping container got hammered, at least my kayak is fine,  my stand up paddle boards got a few dings.  Watched this 200’+ Doug fir fall as I ran for cover after being told by my neighbors this tree had barber chaired and was still standing.  This summer is going to feel really special.







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Whew, finally power and internet is back!  Just when I was about to head to town for more fuel they energized my area.  No more bumming it at hotels for this guy!

How many days without power? After the snow, we went 5.75 days, and that’s a record for us.

Lost power about noon Tuesday, so it was 5 days.  Snow was a 5 days for me as well. 

Wow, that is some crazy forces to be able to crush that container like that  . Glad your yaks are safe!  Must have made quite the sound when it fell.

Wow, that is some crazy forces to be able to crush that container like that  . Glad your yaks are safe!  Must have made quite the sound when it fell.

It was quite the event, I was standing in the middle of my property talking with my neighbor about what we were going to do about a 200’ tall tree with a 17’ splinter sticking out of it.  We watched as small breezes made it sway dramatically and I was in the middle of saying something to the effect of “no tree guy on earth is going to touch that tree until it falls” when we heard a huge crack and started running.  It took out three redwoods and an oak on the way down, luck has it the oak stopped it from crushing my truck too.  Spent the rest of the day cutting a path through the mess so I could get a vehicle out.  I did have a excuse to go buy a Stihl ms462 with a 32” bar after that, my ms271 has been a workhorse but I needed the extra length and 20cc’s.


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Had a similar incident three years ago at the last place I lived in Boulder Creek.  BIG doug fir started leaning and you could see it's starting to crack on the back side of the base due to stress.  Called the landlord and let them know but he said big trees can take a loooong time to fall, shouldn't worry about it.  So I started parking my cars on the street and watched daily this giant lean more and more towards highway 9.  About a week later you could hear the thing cracking all the time and there was a wind storm on the way.  Tried calling the Sheriffs office, the fire department, 911, but no one would come until the thing fell.  When it did it also took out two or three redwood trees, that fell across 9, blocking the road way, taking down 6 power poles and crushing a older toyota and falling around a lady about to pull out on 9, but luckily no one was hurt. 

These tree-falling stories are not going to make me sleep any easier, as we have at least 30 very large fir trees within striking distance of our house. A couple have uprooted recently and fallen over. That's bad enough, but at least those seem to be fairly predictable, since they like to fall downhill. However, there have also been a couple that snapped off like toothpicks about 30' up, and fell in seemingly random directions. One of those fell directly across (as opposed to down) the slope, and it would have crushed half of the house if it had fallen about 5 to 10  degrees more in the downhill direction.

Anybody know a good arborist, who might be able to judge the likelihood of a tree falling?

Hope the repairs went well NowhereMan, these storms have been so brutal and stressful for everyone.  ThereÂ’s 6 homes with huge trees on them you can see from Highway 9 on the way from Boulder Creek to Scotts Valley, and those are just the ones you can see from the road that happened during the wind that came through last Wednesday - 65mph gusts downtown BC.  My poor shipping container got hammered, at least my kayak is fine,  my stand up paddle boards got a few dings.  Watched this 200’+ Doug fir fall as I ran for cover after being told by my neighbors this tree had barber chaired and was still standing.  This summer is going to feel really special.

Here is my running-away-from-falling-tree story...

The morning after the big snow, there were still a few branches falling, but it was rare. So, I decided to climb up on the roof to do a quick survey of the damage. The roof was so covered with snow and branches that it was hard to see much of anything. Just as I reach the far edge (as in "farthest from the ladder"), a large branch from a fir tree breaks off, and it looks like it's falling directly at me. Of course, I turn to run away, but just as I turned to run, I tripped over a branch on the roof and fell hard--sorta like you might see in a low-budget horror movie when the slasher is closing in. I was then looking up desperately trying to get an eye on the falling branch. Fortunately, just as I finally saw it, it was clear that it was going to miss me (in fact, it missed the roof by 2' or so). Those couple of seconds laying in the snow and not having a visual on that falling branch seemed like an eternity...

Hope the repairs went well NowhereMan, these storms have been so brutal and stressful for everyone.  ThereÂÂ’s 6 homes with huge trees on them you can see from Highway 9 on the way from Boulder Creek to Scotts Valley, and those are just the ones you can see from the road that happened during the wind that came through last Wednesday - 65mph gusts downtown BC.  My poor shipping container got hammered, at least my kayak is fine,  my stand up paddle boards got a few dings.  Watched this 200Â’+ Doug fir fall as I ran for cover after being told by my neighbors this tree had barber chaired and was still standing.  This summer is going to feel really special.

Here is my running-away-from-falling-tree story...

The morning after the big snow, there were still a few branches falling, but it was rare. So, I decided to climb up on the roof to do a quick survey of the damage. The roof was so covered with snow and branches that it was hard to see much of anything. Just as I reach the far edge (as in "farthest from the ladder"), a large branch from a fir tree breaks off, and it looks like it's falling directly at me. Of course, I turn to run away, but just as I turned to run, I tripped over a branch on the roof and fell hard--sorta like you might see in a low-budget horror movie when the slasher is closing in. I was then looking up desperately trying to get an eye on the falling branch. Fortunately, just as I finally saw it, it was clear that it was going to miss me (in fact, it missed the roof by 2' or so). Those couple of seconds laying in the snow and not having a visual on that falling branch seemed like an eternity...

  Oh man, a snowy roof plus the risk of falling tree limbs is so top tier homeowner heroics.  Glad you’re okay.

  I used Bob at Travis Tree to cut my 230’ Doug fir and 5 other trees, 2 leaning firs, 2 tan oak and one redwood all along a fence line, those cost me $16k.  Ned at Christianson Tree is another good option.  Richard of Richards tree service took down the two oaks that were damaged by the large fir falling for $400, however, I don’t know what his size limit is.  Bob and Ned are the local heavy hitters. 

  These storms sure haven’t built anyone’s confidence up about living under these giants, but as my grandmother who lived in the sierras used to say, “it’s the price we pay to live in paradise”.  Best of luck to you cleaning up your homestead, and if you do find someone who can fell the trees for you and you need a hand limbing and bucking, give me a holler - I have a couple Stihl saws and I like that kind of work. 


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My bro has my old big stihl which had a bar over 40” and not sure he still has the mill setup. Nowadays I look at the trees and see valuable lumber, so thinking I may have to get set up for that again

If you want to mill Douglas fir, I'll give you all of the raw material that you could ever want...

5 days was our record from the snowstorm as well.
We've lost 5 smaller trees this winter, but other than some minor fence damage and some dents to my old pickup we've fared OK.

Anybody know a good arborist, who might be able to judge the likelihood of a tree falling?

Ugh, we've gotten rid of all our Doug firs, just too much liability were they were.
Not sure if they would go to Los Gatos, but the two best tree guys we've used are:
North County Tree service
Element Arbor Care

Both of these guys are  located in Bonny Doon, and I suspect they both have a lot of work right now.
Even back in 2021 Josh from Element was booked up 3 months out due to Post CZU fire work.

I haven't used these guys, but my neighbors have and give them a good recommendation:
http://www.huertastreeservice.com/

Best wishes to everyone, I'm ready for spring.

I pulled logs from my generator monitoring software to think about our power outages in terms of uptime.  I will start out by saying that I've had it pretty easy compared to others in the surrounding area.  We're in a sweet spot near 9 that has ties to the transmission grid in two directions, so it's a bit more resilient.

Disclaimer aside... here's some data:

• January had 85% uptime (110 hours, 54 minutes and 2 seconds without power)
• February saw 90% uptime (61h 15m 5s of outage)
• March to date is 84% uptime (100h 58m 44s of listening to the generator hum)

And how many times did you get cut off from town 

And how many times did you get cut off from town 

Oh boy... I don't have data on that one and I don't want to think back on how many times!