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

white_spotted_pine_sawyer_hq.jpg

[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]

IMG_20170309_170351208.jpg
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!!