Freaky winds!

 

  Anyone else get affected by the freak winds last night /today?  Lost power last night at 20:35(thereabouts) right in the middle od Survivor, so that was un aceptable.  My little UPS powered the Lamp, TV and cable box till I got the generator fired up. (Luv the elect start generator!) Power was still out this mornning as I left for that ugly 4 letter word.
  Was a strange outtage,  I measured 67.8VAC for the supply, my outdoor flood lamps were working but only at half brightness. So, somewhere, 1 leg of the power supply was lost.  Ran genny till 11pm.
  All the roads I travel on near my house were 2" thick with redood duff, tree limbs, leaves.  My yard looks like someone tossed some bunch redwood limb"Pixie Stixs" all ofer it!  Glad none hit the house.  I'll post some pictures after I get them and power is back on.

Yep. ours went out at about 3:30 pm, then came back at 8pm, then out again after about 25 minutes.
I tucked my truck in next to the house, and my usual parking spot had 4 6"thick redwood branches across it.
Big basin, Alba, Smith, & the Empire cutoff were all closed this morning, and Empire Grade was closed just past the fire station due to a 2.5' foot diameter fir tree down. I ended up taking the Pine Flat/Bonny Doon road down to hwy 1 to get into town this morning.
I read there are 5000 without power this afternoon. the main problem is north of Boulder Creek and impacting much of the SL valley.

I am one of those Griswold Christmas decorators and my inflated grinch and snow man took a beating.  But this year I have a kayak on the roof and it moved alot and only the rope I had tied to it kept it from flying through my neighbors window.  When the inflatable santa shows up, I will post the picture

Got some good winds down here in Fres...
Power issues through the night and morn.
Headed to work and my doughter called me to let me know we need a new fence .... (yesterday she told me her tuition was due next week)

I'm afraid to check on my fences.

No damage, but I did notice last night as I was pulling into my driveway that something didn't seem right. I even had to do a double-take to make sure I was in the right driveway.

Turns out that the big tree in front of my house was gone. No downed tree in the driveway, no miscellaneous debris laying around, it was...just....gone. 

No damage, but I did notice last night as I was pulling into my driveway that something didn't seem right. I even had to do a double-take to make sure I was in the right driveway.

Turns out that the big tree in front of my house was gone. No downed tree in the driveway, no miscellaneous debris laying around, it was...just....gone. 

any luck finding your tree?

Turns out that the big tree in front of my house was gone. No downed tree in the driveway, no miscellaneous debris laying around, it was...just....gone. 

It wasn't an evergreen was it?.....I have heard that real Christmas trees can be quite expensive this time of year!

Power went out last night around 7:30 for a few hours. Got up this morning, no wind and 32 degrees. Drove 18 min East into Santa Rosa where it was 25 degrees warmer and howling wind.

did a short stroll outside.....forget about the downed trees.....let's see some sun dresses       

Headed to work and my doughter called me to let me know we need a new fence ....

Do your fence like this and it won't go anywhere!

No damage, but I did notice last night as I was pulling into my driveway that something didn't seem right. I even had to do a double-take to make sure I was in the right driveway.

Turns out that the big tree in front of my house was gone. No downed tree in the driveway, no miscellaneous debris laying around, it was...just....gone. 

any luck finding your tree?

Nope. Still a mystery. The stump is cut clean, so not sure if most of it fell, then the rest was chopped; or someone thought it might go and decided to save me some grief??

My first thought was that my old lady's dad chopped it down, but he's like 70 and there's no way he could've gotten rid of the remains so fast. The tree was there at 1:00PM and was totally gone at 5:00PM when I got home. Kinda sucks 'cause now I have zero privacy left from what little that tree provided.

Oh well, no more leaves to rake up...

Winds picked up late last night. 60 MPH winds with gust up to 80 MPH. We lost power at 3am and it came back on at 2pm. Just now got internet and phone back at 5pm.

Only got about an hour of sleep last night, we have huge pines and oaks around our house, the wind was howling all night, ever huge gust I would flinch waiting for a tree to come through the roof.


Lot's of downed trees this morning. Lots of fuel, low humidity and dry winds. Scary stuff

Had a little damage in our yard (broken fences and broken kids toys from limbs landing on them and a smashed shed from oak limbs)

Wish I got some of the big gusts on video, it was insane. Pretty scary at times. A few houses in our area had trees fall into them. Total losses.

Glad we didn't have snow in the trees! Tomorrow is going to be a long day raking and cleaning up the yard.









Some short video clips. Nothing of the worst gusts, I got bored without power all day

Yeah, i have two redwoods over 100' in my backyard, and about 6 oaks, and a bay.  They all survived, but my back fence didn't.  The wind was coming straight out of the North at my house.  I'll post a pic tomorrow when it's light.

(I needed to replace the gate anyway.....)

At 11:00 I went out for my nightly hot tub.  Flipped the lid over, so it covered half the tub only.  A couple gusts were so strong I really thought the widowmakers were on their way, I ended up hiding under the closed portion of the spa cover.

The gusts were so strong they cleaned off my decks completely.

Allen

Power is still out in Bonny Doon, but the good news is that the roads are open, the phones are working, and our new water system gravity feeds to the lowest spigot on the house so we can access our 2500gallons of water without having to walk all the way over to the holding tank.
It didn't seem as windy last night, but this morning there were two red wood branches 15ft long and 6" thick in the driveway.

I'm really glad we had the big undercut  fir tree taken down last fall. as it would have come down for sure Thursday night.

Rock Hopper, that's weird about the missing tree! PG&E (Davey tree) has been up in the Bonny Doon area working on their bi-annual vegetation management program, but they have to ask permission to fell a a tree unless it has already come down and presents a hazard.