That was the scene last Thursday morning, after a violent storm ripped through here Wednesday night?– the remnants of the storm that dumped so much rain on Long Island earlier. Travis is standing on the roof of the dog house looking out what was the back side, and Jake is standing where the dog house used to be.
We got plenty of rain, not record amounts though we don’t know exactly how much because our weather station got knocked over. We were prepared for heavy rain, but what surprised us — and what hadn’t been in the forecast — were the ferocious winds that suddenly arrived at the tail-end of the storm. We have trees down everywhere, though fortunately no major?damage and no injuries. (Of course, we had all the dogs inside long before.)
We did have a close call when the top half of a tall spruce toppled over and landed right alongside blind Lena’s corral; the very tip of the tree, a couple of feet, flew into her shed, but she was fine. Most of what’s down are the electric fence lines for the goat pastures in various places around the farm. We have a contractor coming out later this week to cut up the bigger trees so I can reset the fences. We have lots of “widow-makers” in the woods — the top half of trees knocked over, or whole trees knocked over, but hung up in neighboring trees and primed to fall the rest of the way when a branch finally snaps or a gust of wind strikes it. Most of these will need to come down, too. Our contractor will use his excavator “claw” to get most of these out.
Jake is in the hole the blind Beagles dug underneath the dog house as their den. A short while later, I took this next photo … that’s Louie the Beagle curled up in the hole while Billy is checking things out and Austin has just wrapped up his inspection tour:
Louie’s probably thinking, “You know, there used to be something overhead before….” A pretty impressive hole, huh?
We muscled the dog house back into place later that morning and restored their den, much to the Beagles’ relief.
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So please remind me, is that big brown guy Jake? I don’t remember him – that’s not to say you haven’t written about him before. He’s an impressive looking fellow. I love that big beautiful face and nose and those big ears. Maybe you could tell us more about him. The storms have been very odd this year. We’ve gotten several of the storms you mentioned. Was expecting a lot of rain and instead, got just a little then bad wind. It could have been snow, so I guess we shouldn’t complain. 🙂
Oh my, well, glad it’s only a few repairs and tree tops and glad nothing hit the house or barns necessitating major repairs. After the epic snowfalls a few years ago we then got hit with an ice storm here in Western Washington (being from here originally, you probably remember this). So, the topless trees let to lots of tree removal the next spring, which has supplied us with lots of firewood! That’s the upside.
In summertime, when I am yearning for big shade trees near the house, I remember why we avoided planting them in our windy property in the Chehalis River valley. Besides less roof and gutter cleaning, there are those occasional storms that bring stuff down.
Glad you all made it through with minimal repairs.
Sounds like a bad storm all right. With all the trees that came down, it’s very lucky that none hit anything really important. I hope Lena wasn’t too spooked. And what a big mess to clean up. Glad everyone came out of it OK.
The pups are all sub-contractors ….. or maybe they are General Managers in training? Very glad that everyone is safe. How scary!
(On another note, we in drought strickened California can’t remember green grass like that…. wowzer!)
so glad everyone is ok, things can be fixed
Glad everyone is okay!!! That was quite the storm!!!! Love seeing all the sweet ones.
Wow, I’m very happy that there wasn’t any real major damage and that all the animals are ok. The weather has been crazy everywhere! Here in South Carolina, we’ve been having really bad storms, one right after the other. I love the pictures, especially the top one. You can just see them, especially Jake, thinking “um…huh?” Glad you got the doghouses fixed up or you might have had a rebellion on your hands, being led by the Beagles! 🙂
That’s so funny, they know where the house was. Glad everyone is OK up there!