I was at work thursday morning watching the front wall of my shop shake groan and shudder as it was getting the direct onslaught of 60+mph winds coming from the north, and the temps were single digits.
The building is pretty tall, one of those modern half round Quonset style shops, the front big door is about 14’ high or so and as wide, the owner took our boom truck outside to load up a concrete septic tank that we make for a delivery, it was so nasty with the windchill he made a grievous error in stowing the boom, he left it partially up and sticking forward like a medieval battering ram on top of a Peterbilt.
I’m inside, I hear the air horn honk, I hit the button to raise the door. He comes barreling in with the wind behind him and hits the overhead tearing it all out of shape, knocked most of the rollers off the door so its hanging askew, broke a 1 1/4” natural gas pipe that runs over the top of the door to my boiler, sheetrock is flying everywhere hitting me, I ducked outside as the wind started whipping the debris through the shop.
So we called in a couple other workers and spent the rest of the afternoon rigging a tarp over the front door and removing the door panels with a forklift, we used big cargo straps with winches across the width of the door frame to support the tarp, piled truck tires outside to keep the tarp anchored, used up all my welding C clamps to anchor tarp to frame after rolling it around rebar.
Then I came in the next day and rigged a temporary natural gas line out of large hydraulic hose so my in floor heated floor would not freeze up. It has coolant but not enough for minus 10 temps. We get these nasty winds up here and they come up past a huge glacier fed river that is very wide stirring up silt in the air, it made me sick today what with all that cold dry volcanic dust in the air, stuff has volcanic glass in it from over the years from our local volcanoes.
Yes its a hoot here in Alaska, winds, long winters, earthquakes all the time. We can see stuff here that would terrify hurricane veterans.
made me cold just reading about it....but then I was laughing too so maybe I am a bad person after all. I grew up in the rockies and loved the snow and wind as a little one. Older now and just looking at the movie White Chritsmas can get my shivers going. Tell your boss.....nah never mind