Spring Windstorm

It’s unusual around here to get much in the way of windstorms during the spring months. This super wet, and cold winter had been out of the ordinary already. Last week there was a report of a swirling wind that hit just north of Vancouver, Washington. It was even classified as a tornado even though it was the lowest class at an EF-0 on Fujita scale. This means the swirling winds were less than 73 miles an hour.

During this spring storm, a gust was clocked at 80 miles and hour in the west hills of Portland, but the winds were not swirling.

Here on the farm, the trees swayed, branches broke off and flew through the pastures. The sound of the wind racing through the trees on the hilltop sounded more like a busy commute of Portland traffic that a spring day. Throughout Northwest Oregon and Southwest Washington power outages were counted by the thousands then by the tens of thousands on the news reports as the storm raged on.

We noticed minimal damage around the barns, house and yard. Just a green coating of branches covering the ground.  That was until we headed outdoors to feed the main herd across the river.

I took this picture from on top the bridge. The alder tree had broken off and fell toward the river, a big branch hit the bridge and shattered across the driving surface.

A quick clean up had to be performed to get the passage back open for travel.

I was not able to get a ‘before shot’, only this ‘after’ still showing some of the debris from the tree branch and the tree itself laying below the right side of the bridge about halfway across.

We still haven’t made it into the woods to see what kind of damage was inflicted on the tall timber.

I am looking forward to a little calmer weather.