Before It Fell

Sunday afternoon we were going about our business, busily preparing the much anticipated dinner of Robby's famous Swiss Steak. This is one of my most favorite meals even though it is time consuming and messy to prepare. I was excited about the food, but even more so about the company. Brian and Shannon where FINALLY going to experience the meal that I talked about the entire trip home from Cambodia a few years ago. This picture was taken at 1:28pm (while we still had electricity).

About 10 minutes later we were standing in our kitchen hoping the the power outage would be short, and trying to decide what options we had for cooking this huge amount of prepared meat. I walked out onto the back porch and looked down the power line (not sure what I expected to see. . . ). Our neighbors had a big limb that had fallen and was blocking the street and had possibly taken the power line down with it. Until then I hadn't realized how hard the wind was actually blowing. I stood there and watched as the siding was ripped off the carport of the house behind ours, but the excitement didn't really start until I went out front.

Our neighborhood is full of trees. Some are small and only a few years old, but many are huge towering beauties that have been around for several generations. Standing on the front porch I could hear nothing but the wind rushing through the trees. Even the sirens from the fire station down the street couldn't compete with the roar of the wind as it's gusts cleared it's own path through the neighborhood.

When I first saw the trunk of our tree swaying in the wind I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. I watched as each gust pushed the entire tree from side to side. But when I saw the grass raise up I knew it was only a matter of time until our tree would succumb to the power of the winds. I went back inside and with a matter-of-fact attitude I announced to Robby "We are going to lose our tree today." As I tried to explain to him what I saw, he rolled his eyes and looked at me as if I was crazy. When he decided to check it out for himself he was shocked. We realized that this tree had the potential to take out several houses depending on how it fell in this gusty, shifting wind, so Robby went around and told all the neighbors while I tried to get the kids into the basement-just in case. I shot this video from the front porch at 2:01pm. Watch as the roots lift the grass and landscape blocks towards the right of the tree. . .

*NOTE* I removed the sound from this video in an attempt to avoid the embarrassment of my incoherent ramblings.

The video of the tree as it fell (see previous post) was shot at 2:03pm. Amazingly, no one was injured and no property was damaged by this huge tree. Any shift in the angle that it fell would have had a different outcome.