Near 5 pm the lights flickered and the house went dark except for my PCs which use uninterruptible power supplies. Their battery back-ups are designed to gracefully shut down and prevent the hashing of any open files. The ground shook violently. Moments later the lights around me came back up. What in God’s name?
Sixty mile-an-hour winds cut through this part of the world tonight on the backside of a cold weather system that rolled through over the weekend. A large maple tree in our backyard had cracked in two about four feet above its base. The top fifty feet crashed down across our power line and filled the back yard and about a quarter of our garden beyond with a massive tree.
In the gathering dark I went out the front door and walked cautiously around the house to look. I found some damage to the very corner of the roof, but clearly a glancing and not crushing blow. Our power and cable wires are now under a couple of tons of maple tree, but both are still functioning. Needless to say, my dog Scout and I will not be visiting the backyard again for a while.
The week ahead will be taken up with power company calls, insurance calls, cable company calls, tree removal calls and God knows what else. I’ll be postponing my platelet donation set for tomorrow. Why do I feel so fortunate?
I’ve taken down a few small trees in my day and I know the weight of a tree is way beyond what it might seem standing up. This mammoth will weigh in the thousands of pounds. Had it hit the house square, as I’ve seen a few times while working Red Cross disaster calls, we’d be dealing with much worse than we are. No one was hurt. I thank God for my great good fortune!
Richard Authier Lee 