Strong winds

[Tweegs]

We got hammered yesterday.
No power today, no estimate for restoration.
Could be out a couple of days.
Up on the generator today.

My wife was boiling when the power went out. All she could do was finish off what was in the head tank.
I took the day off. Close to 200 gallons left to run.

We’ve got trees down on at least one main line out in the woods.

Our plan is to finish off what we have in the tanks, I’ve got to drain all of the RO lines and get the membranes up to the house (lots of cold coming and no power = no heat= frozen membranes and burst plumbing) and then deal with the downed main(s).
Long day ahead.

How did everyone else fare?

[motowbrowne]

I think I was pretty lucky. Of course I haven't been through the whole woods yet, but no huge disasters. The wind did snap one of the cables that secures my stack, but luckily it didn't blow the stack over.

[Zucker Lager]

Not boiling here yet in Sugar Camp WI. We lost some red pines to the wind not much else, that sure was some windstorm. Pine sawyers are killing all our red pines in this area so many are weak and punky in the stump area and a little wind takes them down. The whole area has power outages, the wind finally died down this morning. Now they are saying 20's daytime and below zero temps at night. Jay

15956

[Snappyssweets]

Personally we fared well out of these insane winds. I have not been out through the woods yet I have some dead ash that were standing before this. I was going to wait to cut until after season. We have several other dead ash (thanks emerald ash borer) that are down. I do have buckets strewn about out there about to go deal with them.

However the area (Mid Michigan) has power outages, trees down, roads closed. Had a buddy lose what was a very healthy looking sugar maple in his yard next to his driveway. It simply snapped the trunk about half way up and where it began to crown and down half the tree went.

Be careful out there cleaning up everyone. Remember Think BEFORE you cut. I know most of us are used to saws and trees however things get dangerous in cleanups.

[huntingken111]

Thought my smoke stack was secure but not strong enough when one of the neighbors trampoline blew over and took guide wires with it. Made a mess out of smoke stack lost 8 feet of it when fell and smashed to ground. Have not been to woods yet but road side trees I lost bags.

[Ivyacres]

Lots of trees and branches down in the woods. No damage to lines. A bunch of taps were pulled out of trees. Some were bone dry. Are they done for the season? I put them back in. Bringing all of the pumps and buckets in to clean up. Hope for one more good run next week, Lord willing.

[Cedar Eater]

I'm one of the lucky ones. No damage yesterday to any of my saplines. Nothing more than a brief power bump here. After the Christmas outage two years ago, it's nice to get through a high wind event without a problem. Consumers has been doing a lot of trimming around here. There were road closures and isolated power outages in the area yesterday and I do have some new treefalls on both of my properties, but the maple season is still going strong.

[parrothead600]

Had a power line go down across the street which caused a fire that burnt approx. 1/2 an acre and caused a power outage for a day. Power is back now. I went out to collect sap during the worst part of the winds. Only a few dead ash trees were down and all the milk jugs were still hanging on the trees.

[Tweegs]

Still no power here. Might get it back tomorrow, maybe.

Got everything taken care of.
Only one main line down with 3 popped laterals in the immediate vicinity.
It was in a low area, swampy, 4” of standing, stinking water.
One lateral pulled off the fitting at the main line wire and was laying in that water.

Glad it popped at the saddle end. Had it pulled off from the tree end the vacuum would have sucked that swamp dry.
Can you imagine the mess that would have created?

There were only two taps on that lateral plugged in to silvers.
I thought I’d replace that section of lateral from the last drop to the main, then thought better.

In the end I just capped that saddle off and pulled those two taps............. ‘cause, ewww.

[Lethalbowman]

16002
Had this rather large Ash tree break off at ground level and fall over and get hung up in one of my good producing Maples. I carefully & quickly removed the bag holder and another one you can't see to a large Sugar Maple I hadn't tapped in a couple years. I had one eye on that Ash and was listening for any cracking sound just in case that tree decided to finish it's travel to the ground. Whew!!

[lawrence d]

Power has been out here for three days large maple tree fell on the power line
Caused a large fire across the road from me
fire department response was really slow and when they did show my neighbors house was right in its path they got it stopped in time
They are saying Monday here for restoring power looks like winter is back so no sap to boil
I have a small generator helps keep me warm

[Tweegs]

We got power back 8 PM last night.
The wife, the cat, the chickens…they’re all happy.

Dashed my plans for camping out in front of the woodstove, though.
Not sure how I feel about that, was almost looking forward to it.

Of course, my luck, an ant would have crawled out of the wood pile and tried to take up residence in my ear. Would’ve ruined the whole experience.

Bah, best I just went to bed. I’m getting a little long in the tooth for those types of shenanigans anyway.

[Michael Greer]

It was pretty scary here in far Northern New York. Power went off a couple times, but came back pretty quick. The wind too a huge 30" branch off of one of my favorite trees.

[Cedar Eater]

I ended up finding one stem from one of my tapped clump reds on the ground yesterday. It snapped off above the tap. I don't know what to expect from that tap during the next run. I cut the stem up and it was mostly dead at the top.

[David in MI]

Our power still hasn't been restored yet. Before everything froze up solid we got two boils in but without the RO. Had to dump around 300 gallons of sap we'd been holding while waiting on the previous freeze up. Now have around 600-700 gallons in tank. I sure miss my RO!

We do have a whole-house standby generator but it has its own propane tank and we're running pretty low. Hopefully we'll get power back tonight. Ugh, what a season.

[toquin]

David

Where did your door, in your avatar, come from16029

[highlandcattle]

Here on our city lot, had a blue spruce uproot behind the one garage. No root system. Took out 2 sections of stockade fencing. Really high winds. Hoping we find a buyer soon to get back to the country. Our poor tree made Channel 20 news. No power out. Not used to being dependent on National Grid for power, miss the wood stove. We're switching to coal when we move. Found a great Amish coal stove. Good luck everyone

[karl evans]

Here in Northeast Ohio it has been the worst couple months I ever remember for wind &damage. I have had atleast 10 uprooted trees along with many broke off tops &, limbs. It has been constant work to clean up & fix damage in the woods just since tapping. One begins to wonder how any trees live to an old age. Sure hope we don't have another time period this windy for a long time.

[Tweegs]

Harvested nearly 3 cord of wood from blow downs over the weekend.
Plenty more to get.
<shrug> cold snap…nothing better to do.