Crashing trees

A storm moved through last night that had gusts of winds that reached 70mph in our town.

The rain started in the afternoon and by night we could hear the wind picking up until at about 11:30pm when the lights began to flicker and Anne called me to tell me that she heard a tree crash outside.  She heard a few more crashing sounds before about 12:30am when it all quietened down.

I went outside this morning and discovered that we had had a pretty close call.  There were 3 trees near our house that had snapped like twigs.  Large pine trees with a trunk diameter of at least a meter had been snapped clean in two.  In other places in the wood behind our house the roots were ripped from the ground that had been softened by the rain.

At about 7:20am the boys were ecstatic to learn that school had been canceled.  I drove to work and stopped on the way to take some pictures of the scenes of destruction.

The Ipswich River Audubon reserve near my office is a place that I sometimes sneak out to on the way to or from work.  The one road to the reserve was closed - I suppose because a downed tree had broken some electrical wires - and I had to drive around to approach it from the opposite side.  The people working there saw me get out my car with my camera gear and thought I was the insurance assessor come to take photos of the trees!

There were a couple of hawks out hunting and I managed to get my first photograph of a Northern Flicker - it was pretty far away so is not much more than a record shot, but I was still pleased to get it!

On my way to the office after a quick walk in the reserve I noticed a house with a tree lying squarely on the roof.   The owner was out taking a look at the damage so I felt a bit uncomfortable about stopping right then.  I took another trip to the reserve this afternoon after work and stopped to photograph the house.  By then the tree had been cut back off the roof and you can see the sagging dent where it lay.