Stormy Night

  Stormy nights aren't unusual at Pinehaven. I've lived here nearly 40 years and they're a regular occurrence. Spring, of course, is the worst. And though the numbers might not reach the level of some other storms, last night's midnight thunderstorms are ones I won't forget.

 I went to bed at 10:20 pm and Parker crawled in beside me and we were both out like lights. It had been raining hard all evening. The Tempest said we had exceeded an inch. The was plenty of lightning and thunder earlier but when I went to bed we were in a peaceful lull.

 By midnight we weren't.

 I woke to a crash and saw that the power was out. I got up and looked out the window but saw no trees down. I was going to call the outage in when the power came back on. This repealed three times.

 But it wasn't the power, nor the rain that concerned me most. It was the wind. The Tempest always reads low, probably due to its design and the fact that we have so many pines surrounding the yard. Here's what it showed:

  The wind I was hearing was buffeting the house like a hurricane. It certainly seemed to me to be in the 50 to 60 mph range. To check the Dayton airport I went to iWindSurf.com:

 That also seems low to me but I have two stations that are giving similar readings.

 Things began settling down about 1 am. Parker didn't seem to be bothered and I eventually fell back to sleep, too.

 This morning I found 1.82" of rain in the gauge. And I also found a skylight from the barn roof torn to pieces and scattered across the back yard.

 I walked into the barn expecting to find a gaping hole but everything was still covered. The fiberglass panel must have been installed as a sandwich atop an older one. Though the concrete floor was wet, the area was at least not open to the sky.

 

 Here are the pieces gathered together and laid on the back porch.

 No doubt this was a memorable storm. But it could have been worse. There's no critical damage and the house roof looks intact with no shingles lifted. All our trees still stand.

..........

Now just a minute ...

 Our neighbor's son texted me this afternoon asking if I knew a skylight was missing on our barn? I told him I though one that was doubled up was missing but I wasn't aware of a hole.

 Holy sh-t! Look at this:

 Bottom line: I need a roof repairman ... soon. It's supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow. Oh well, everything got wet last night.

Blue Spruce Down

  On March 13 we had very high winds that took one of the Blue Spruce at the western edge of our property down. While the peak gust recorded on my Tempest was 48 mph, the NWS station at the airport in Vandalia officially recorded a gust to 77 mph. That's hurricane speed.

03-14-26

03-14-26

 Since those winter winds laid this tree down against the one beside it, it has slowly fallen farther.

04-13-26

 Yesterday DR Coffman was using his backhoe in the field behind us and he stopped and asked whether we wanted the tree knocked the whole way down so it would be more accessible for cleanup. I told him to go head. One good nudge and the tree was on the ground. the roots standing vertically.

 When we got home from pizza with Bob and Chris and after a game of cards, Tom wanted to go out and see how much he could get cleaned up. We have two 100' extension cords and I carried the chin saw back and Tom got to work.

 I think I planted the tree soon after we moved in, probably in the late 1980's. Spruce and pine are not doing well here, probably due to the climate change.

 A couple of hours later and the tree was cut into manageable pieces and those hauled off to our wood pile.

04/14/26: Here's the tree being burnt, limb by limb.

And the spot where the tree once stood, now filled with three bags of topsoil and sprinkled with  fresh grass seed.

 That project is now done ...