Please take it serious!

[Patty A]

We had high wind warnings out for our area yesterday. And it happens often, so often that a lot of times I don't really worry much about it. Well it taught me a lesson yesterday, my neighbor's barn roof ended up about 10 feet from my dining room window with boards flying through the air like crazy! One was headed right for the window that my 19 year old daughter was standing in front of!
I grabbed her and we spun around and I sit us both on the floor behind the freezer so fast that I didn't even have time to think I just did it. Thank God it didn't hit the window, I couldn't believe it but it stopped short by about 2 feet!
The wind is blowing again today, and with all the tin and boards from the barn here from yesterday I am totally spooked. I hope we don't get them as bad as we did yesterday!

PLEASE take the warning seriously when you hear the warnings come out......

[Ceashels]

Wow, that could have been a disaster. Good Grab on your daughter and I hope the wind settles down for you soon.

[sabrelvssammy]

i have to totally agree with Patty.... when we had the effect of the hurricane winds felt across the mid-west last year i was at my cabin in the woods.... i started getting calls from my tenants that trees were falling on their houses, power lines were being ripped off their houses from huge limbs...and on and on.....

i had to get back into the city coz chaos was beginning...i should never had tried to leave the 'somewhat' safety of the cabin... as i made my 10 mile journey thru a state forest every dirt or gravel road i turned down was blocked by trees left and right...these are one way lanes that i had to back out of each time...sometimes over a mile...i tried road after road and was running out of options...and now i was at the point that i couldn't get back to the safety of the cabin either.... i continued on...next road...blocked by tree....i started backing out...big tree comes down within 1 ft of my back bumper...now i am stuck between 2 trees...on a one-way dirt road...trees and limbs falling all around the SUV...some (thankfully) smaller ones boucing off the truck..... this is NOT a good situation to be in i think as i look up thru the moon-roof and see all the 'huge' trees swaying violently back and forth above me.....

i get out of the suv...and thinking like an 'ant' i proceed to move one of the 'rubber-tree' plants.... now a 400lb 'lumberjack' wasn't going to be moving these beasts either...but you know the old story...'woman lifts car off child with bare hands'.... well...gotta tell ya...it didn't work... i tried and tried....neither tree was going anywhere without a chainsaw....
so as i am out there trying to move a mountain i am getting 'pummeled' with limbs and branches and i finally decide maybe when the next big one comes down i really ought to be in the safety of the car...at least i will have the 'floor space' to climb into....so i get back into the suv...

now mind you i am in the 'middle of nowhere'.... had it even been safe to get to a home...there are NONE.... so i figure i will be sitting here at least thru the night...maybe a day or two longer...that's how traveled these roads are and now the only ways in are in-passible.... i sit there for about 1/2 hr...not frightened really...more pissed off than anything....afraid my car is going to get smashed...my tenants are going to attempt to fix their problems themselves...(HIGHLY unlikely...but the though scared the heck out of me)...lol.... so i HAD to get home....

so i threw it into 4 wheel drive.... and drove right over the huge tree in my way...(now it never occured to me that i might make it over the first tree and there could be 100 more ahead of it)...i just wanted over THAT tree and right now.... and as i went over the top of it i could hear the entire bottom of my SUV being 'ripped' out (or so i thought)....so i made it...and i made it over all the (thankfully) smaller trees in my way...and i watched my gauges so that i knew if i busted an oil pan or something....i just needed to be out to main road to get help if needed...(though the main road i found out when i got there was just as bad...at least there were other's out there trying to navigate like myself)....

so i made it back to town...a usual 20 min trip that took 3 1/2 hrs to get there....and then the REAL fun began....

but when i look back on it...i should have stayed put...but i had no idea when i left what mother nature had planned for us that day....and it was a mess... and the things that COULD have happened because of all this....totaled vehicle...totaled ME out there trying to move trees....stuck out in the forest for days (though i wouldn't have DIED over that one)....

take the warnings seriously as patty says...she was in her own home and still risked harm.... i am so glad your were safe patty...what a scary thing to go thru....it just happens so quick.....and you are proof that you don't have to be 'out in it' to suffer harm.....

[LastDragonfly]

We are having EXTREME winds today...winds sustained at 35 mph and gusting up to 50...it's awful...so if you are West of me...get ready... I should be landing on PraireRose's porch right after lunch...

We don't have lots of trees here only residential areas...(very dangerous)

I have a healthy respect for wind warnings.....we mostly worry about fire danger....we've had no measurable moisture since October....aack.

[2ndGenGranola]

I've even got my blinds pulled today. We are 1 block from some land they have plowed up for construction. All I see is orange.

Watch out for power lines too. I had to drive home from work through the middle of nowhere. I got to see some pretty serious whip action from the power lines.

[Thevail]

We learned that lesson last year. We live on the west coast and don't normally get anything really bad except flooding.

The storms last year literally shredded my parents roof.
I don't care if they refuse to call it a hurricane...if you get 100 mile an hour wind and rain coming in off the ocean..it's a flippin' hurricane

Do take the warnings seriously, find somewhere sheltered to park your car too, because it's usually the only shelter you'll have if something happens to your house.

[Spirit Deer]

We had a storm hit here on July 4, 1999, at mid-day. If there were warnings, we didn't hear them and most of the other people up here at the height of the tourist season probably didn't either. The storm just came out of nowhere with winds up to 80 mph. It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen as we stood in our living room watching seventy foot pines bend at a right angle in that wind.

The estimate was that there were 80,000 people out in the woods or on the 500 lakes in the area. It's a miracle no one was killed. Some people were severely injured. Some friends of ours rode the storm out huddled under a picnic table inside a screen tent. They said they could see the trees all around them snapping off, but the wind was so loud they couldn't hear them breaking. Naturally, they were completely terrified. When it was all over, trees covered the ground all around them with their little pathetic 'shelter' the only clear spot.

There are places still where the deadfall is ten foot or more deep. Twenty-five million (not a typo) trees went down in that storm in our immediate area. We now sit in a tinderbox of dead trees waiting for a lightning strike or a careless camper to set off a forest fire so large and ferocious we locals have already been warned there may be no way to stop it.

We were lucky on our place. We lost one little two-inch sapling and had one large tree that was cracked at the base, which the power company thoughtfully came and removed for us at no charge. We lost power but had no idea for a couple of days how widespread and severe the storm had been.

SAR teams went into the adjacent roadless million acres of the Boundary Waters looking for people and did an amazing job using canoes, motor boats, float planes, and helicopters. Motorized machinery of any kind is banned in the BW, but of course an exception was made due to the seriousness of the situation and the need to locate and evac the injured and others who needed assistance.

Wouldn't you know the week after the storm, there were letters to the editor in our local paper from tourists bitching about how the overflights and the sound of boat motors within the BW had ruined someone's "wilderness experience." Some things just make a person wonder...

[sabrelvssammy]

We had a storm hit here on July 4, 1999, at mid-day. If there were warnings, we didn't hear them and most of the other people up here at the height of the tourist season probably didn't either. The storm just came out of nowhere with winds up to 80 mph. It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen as we stood in our living room watching seventy foot pines bend at a right angle in that wind.

The estimate was that there were 80,000 people out in the woods or on the 500 lakes in the area. It's a miracle no one was killed. Some people were severely injured. Some friends of ours rode the storm out huddled under a picnic table inside a screen tent. They said they could see the trees all around them snapping off, but the wind was so loud they couldn't hear them breaking. Naturally, they were completely terrified. When it was all over, trees covered the ground all around them with their little pathetic 'shelter' the only clear spot.

There are places still where the deadfall is ten foot or more deep. Twenty-five million (not a typo) trees went down in that storm in our immediate area. We now sit in a tinderbox of dead trees waiting for a lightning strike or a careless camper to set off a forest fire so large and ferocious we locals have already been warned there may be no way to stop it.

We were lucky on our place. We lost one little two-inch sapling and had one large tree that was cracked at the base, which the power company thoughtfully came and removed for us at no charge. We lost power but had no idea for a couple of days how widespread and severe the storm had been.

SAR teams went into the adjacent roadless million acres of the Boundary Waters looking for people and did an amazing job using canoes, motor boats, float planes, and helicopters. Motorized machinery of any kind is banned in the BW, but of course an exception was made due to the seriousness of the situation and the need to locate and evac the injured and others who needed assistance.

Wouldn't you know the week after the storm, there were letters to the editor in our local paper from tourists bitching about how the overflights and the sound of boat motors within the BW had ruined someone's "wilderness experience." Some things just make a person wonder...

isn't it simply amazing no matter how much or what you do for people there are always going to be some people that have to gripe & complain....i wonder how much more 'ruined' their experience would have been had they layed under a fallen tree for a week before someone could come and dig them out....

it's like the ice storm a few months ago here....people bitching about running out of toilet paper at the shelters and FEMA hadn't brought them any yet...while the rest of the population around here were just trying to help each other stay warm and patch the holes in our roofs....

we are one 'screwed-up' society...that's for sure...

[Momto2Boyz]

We learned that lesson a few years ago. We had a microburst open up right over our house (my understanding of it, is that it is similar to a tornado, but instead of the winds coming down into a funnel, everything gets sucked up into the air).

We were really lucky. Our tree came down and took out our fence, but was 5 feet from our house and 5 feet from our neighbors house. Alot of our neighbors weren't so lucky. In 2 block radius, 7 houses had trees come down on top of them. It was nuts!

The sirens go off, we hit the laundry room with no windows!

[cab54]

OMG, I'm glad you and DD are OK!

I saw 'high winds' take a big log lawn swing and toss it end over end from my grandparents yard (next door) into our yard. It normally took my grandpa and 4 of his sons to move it. It was a BIG HEAVY swing. This happened when I was 12 years old and babysitting my siblings.

I made them all go into the basement.

[Spirit Deer]

isn't it simply amazing no matter how much or what you do for people there are always going to be some people that have to gripe & complain....i wonder how much more 'ruined' their experience would have been had they layed under a fallen tree for a week before someone could come and dig them out....

Exactly. One of the people airlifted out by SAR had a broken back. I guess she should have just laid there and died instead of anyone coming to search for her and help her when she desperately needed help and care, rather than forcing the whiners to put up with a little engine noise.

Common sense did prevail though, since the vast majority of the letters published were from people thanking SAR, DNR, numerous law enforcement agencies, and everyone else who worked so hard to help people in the aftermath.

[2ndGenGranola]

My Mom saw some kind of microburst or something pick up a neighbors horse and set it into another yard. Luckily my Mom had some tv reports to confirm her sighting because she was being accused of being a little tipsy.

[Thevail]

Man, I don't know what's going on, but our weather here has gotten a lot more sudden and severe in the last couple of years.

I've lived within the same 70 mile square area for over 15 years now, and this winter was the first time it had EVER gotten below 25 degrees. It was about 17 degrees for over a week, the ground froze almost 6 inshes deep.

I know you guys in the midwest get winters like that all the time, but we're on the Pacific coast! That does not happen here, seriously.

And God Bless Fargo ND and that sister town in Minnesota...those poor people.

[sabrelvssammy]

and the winds...i don't remember winds being so severe and so often as what we have had this past year....

[Spirit Deer]

There is no question the climate IS changing. The reasons are open for debate, but things are different. Our winters here have been more severe and longer the past few years, too. We were heating the house here till well into June last year.

BTW, it's Moorhead, MN, that's across the river from Fargo, ND. They have a very long week ahead of them and some nasty weather to deal with on top of it all.