Scary Storm.

8-27-07 VERMONT: The big event was a violent storm on Saturday evening. We were on the way to Stone Soup restaurant in Strafford when it hit. There were intense straight-line winds for about 30 minutes with lightning and heavy rain. We were pretty nervous driving and watching the trees jumping and dancing around, but I figured going back was as dangerous as going ahead and would also mean missing a meal. A fallen tree across the road at Huntington Farm did hold us up. The first driver in line chained his truck to the tree and pulled it aside, and we all went ahead. The whole thing was over by the time we got to the restaurant.

The Reese’s were supposed to join us, but left home a few minutes after us and never got there. Another tree on the road fell behind us onto the power lines, but in front of them. A tree hanging on the wires closes the road. Within a few minutes, all the other roads to the Strafford village were closed by other fallen trees and downed wires. At the restaurant, they had no power, nor did anyone else, but they fed us by candlelight. We called the Reese’s for rescue before starting home. We parked at Huntington Farm and walked around the road blockage through a pasture to meet John Reese, who drove us home.

We found a lot of sticks and leaves down in the yard, and parts of two maples along the road blown down into the pasture. They each took out a section of the split-rail fence. The horses and dogs were all upset by the storm. After we notified the horses’ mom and dad and calmed the dogs, we went to the Reese’s for coffee. There were a few more showers during the night, but no further excitement. All the power and phones were out until the next afternoon, about the same time that we were able to pick up the car.

Sunday we started on the clean up. Bill Wallace and Steve Hoffman did some chainsaw work on the maples down in the pasture while I built a burn pile of all the smaller branches and leaves. The pile is now about eight feet tall. Judy picked up the debris in the yard. Today I got started on converting the maples into firewood with my new Stihl chainsaw. There will probably be about a cord of wood when it is all cut, split and stacked, which will take a while. A walk around the pasture to check the fence line showed five more trees down, but only two on the wire part of the fence. They were sectioned, and the fence popped back up. A pine was also down in the woods behind the pond.

For all that trauma we got only 0.35 inches of rain. There had been a couple sprinkles before the storm and gave us 0.05 inches making for a very dry August. The water-glass barometer was warning us beforehand about the coming storm. Low pressure lets the water rise up the spout.

New blooms: haven’t had time to check.


Storm Warning.