Be Careful What You Wish For

Until last night, my part of Minnesota was officially under a severe drought situation. When I heard there might be rain last night, I was keeping my fingers and toes crossed for a good soaking.

Well, we definitely got rain. And thunder. And lightning. And lots and lots of wind.

The picture to the left is looking west along the pond. We had one weeping willow snap in half, a green ash snap in half, two extremely large branches come off two other willows, and loads of branches. The power is out, too. From what I understand, the winds were up to 75-80 miles per hour. It was a powerful storm.

Below are some more pictures. The quality is only so-so - I should have waited until the sun was a bit higher in the sky. Spouse and I will be spending the weekend piling up branches and getting ready for Bob the tree guy to take care of the big stuff.

Below Left: Willow snapped in half. Right: Ash snapped in half.

Below Left: Big willow branches down. Right: General debris.

Below: More branches down next to the pond.

Comments

[Annie in Austin]

Oh boy, Tracy - you really got hit. I'm sorry you had so much damage and don't envy you the cleanup. Maybe next spring there'll be some consolation if the increased sunlight brings more wildflowers.

Annie at the Transplantable Rose

PS Just curious...if you have no power - how did you post this?

[RuthieJ]

Oh Tracy,
I thought about you guys up there yesterday morning. A storm woke me up about 5:30 AM and when I turned on the computer to look at the radar all of the Twin Cities Metro area was covered with this giant red radar blob (and a little bit of embedded purple too). I saw the pictures on channel 5 news of the damage at the state fairgrounds, but your yard looks just as bad, if not worse. I'm sorry to see your trees were so badly damaged--they take so long to grow back again.

[kris]

Hi Tracy - sorry you were hit so hard. Bummer that your trees were damaged. We were lucky here and mainly just had thunder, lightning and rain.

[kim]

Oh yikes... I hate seeing such damage to the big trees. :( Glad you got a little much-needed rain, though, Tracy.

[eliz]

We lost thousands in Western New York last Oct., so I defnitely sympathize. Willows grow quickly, though, right?

They are lovely trees.

[Greengril]

Oh, no! I hope everything survived tonight's storm. I'd hate to see more trees lost.

[Tracy]

Thanks, everyone.

Annie - Good catch! I stopped in at work to make sure we had power and posted from there.

RuthieJ - I know you guys have had some wild weather earlier this summer. It looks like the storm hit a few very localized areas hard - like a swath through Bloomington east through Eagan, then another at the Fairgrounds.

Kris - I hope you got through Monday night's storm okay - I know you are north of me.

Kim - The rain was good, the tree damage not so much. The good news is that we'll be planting some new ones this fall. Not that I don't like our current trees - but there are nicer ones out there.

Eliz - I know you guys got hit hard last year, and definitely had more damage. The willows grow fast, so I'm sure we'll have some new big branches soon.

Greengirl: We got lucky last night - just lots of rain, thunder and lightning - but no more trees down.

[kris]

Hi Tracy - it was pretty wild here last night with all the wind, thunder and lightning, but luckily we survived once again without any damage. Thanks for thinking of us!

[Tracy]

Kris - Glad you survived another one!