Chapter 1 :~) - The storm
First of all a time sequence... We logged off here at around 5:30 when the wind started kicking up, shut down the computers, grabbed our 'go bag' and the dogs, and went over to Rosie's next door. Her place is in the open and at much less risk than ours of getting hit by anything. The power was still on, we hung out there till she wanted to go to bed a little after 10. At that time, we were amazed we still had power. It'd been blowing pretty hard (what we used to think was blowing hard) for a few hours, and we'd seen lots of transformers blowing on the skyline.
Well, we knew we weren't sleeping, so we packed the dogs into the back of the Ranger, parked it in the store parking lot with a view of our place, and prepared to ride it out there. We had the radio, some drinks and snacks, and our high beams aimed at the house.
The horses were out. Any guilt I had about putting them out in the storm disappeared when the wind really started to kick up. It wasn't safe anywhere under the trees, not in the house, not in the barn. We watched our trees take 30-40 mph sustained winds. Gusts in Olympia are reported to have been as high as 50-something at the airport till the power went out and their instruments stopped recording, and as high as 78 at the Olympia AM radio station. I don't know if we had any that high ~at~ the house, but I will say it's higher than I have ever seen it before.
These trees, I can now say, can take 40 mph winds. They sway, little branches come off, but they don't look like they're going to come ~down~ at 40. Then the gusts would come, and we'd see them sway and the branches bend and we'd hear things beginning to break, and just when we thought the tree could not possibly take it any more, the gusts would ease off again. Sometimes it would be almost calm for a few minutes, and we'd get out of the truck and check on the horses, scan the fence line with the spotlight, and look closer to see if there had yet been any damage.
The horses were troopers… They stayed under the trees in the paddock till it started getting scary there, then they went out into the pasture. The wind was coming from directly behind our place, the pasture being in 'front' on the lee side of the woods, so it was somewhat protected from the full force of the winds. We stood out there for a couple of the gusts. The horses were not happy, but they weren't scared. We gave them some additional hay out there at some point and took this picture.
None of the other pictures or videos I tried to take at night turned out, unfortunately.
The power [finally] went out around 11:45. I say finally because we'd been seeing the light show of transformers blowing for almost 3 hours before ours finally failed. The worst of the winds were from about midnight till about 2:00 am. We could hear trees cracking and breaking everywhere around, some across the street went down. During that time, and listening to the radio reports of damage, and watching the trees in the yard blow and bend to gusts like I've never seen, we were very glad to not be under it, and dreading that we might very well lose our house, or the barn. True, we only rent and it's not really ours, but if the house was ruined where would we go? We tried not to talk about that, but it was on our minds. I tried to remember that as long as we remain safe, anything else can be survived. We were in the very best place we could be, there in the truck, out of range of the trees but close enough that we could guard our place, and do what we could if we needed to. I was most afraid for trees taking out the paddock fence and horses getting loose. We were sooo lucky.
Around 4 am, when it had been pretty quiet (heh – wind "only" 20 or so) for a long time and the radio reports were indicating that the worst had passed, we checked the horses again, looked around for damage, and came inside and went to bed. Didn't sleep much, if at all, we were wired. By six I was up again, in emergency busy mode already, feeding the horses, clearing the branches off the fence, wading around in a deep green carpet of limbs that covered the whole ground. I was eager for daylight, it was sooo dark with no ambient light at all anywhere. It was probably 8 or 9 am when it got light enough to take pictures.
More coming in Chapter 2, and pictures... I won't ping everyone to every chapter, so that those of you on dial up will not have to load the most picture intensive posts on your My Comments page. But they're coming up :~)