Western Washington Severe Weather December 2008 Day11 5:30pm

Pine Tree Casualty

The leaning pine tree, which forked about 10 feet up, lost one of it's forks today. It dropped across the front of the house, just missing the edge of the roof. It landed where I used to park the car, I'm glad I started pulling forward a few months ago. Also, much to my chagrin, the power line I had been protecting on an hourly basis with those whackings didn't survive the fall but it turns out it wasn't the power line after all. It was the phone line. I was initially relieved, but after some thought, had I known that I would have been even more vigilant. After all, I have that shiny new kerosene heater and it has a flat top surface I could have warmed a pan of soup over. And enough safe candles to light the neighborhood. But being stuck here since the snow began to fall, and with the forecast calling for freezing tonight and more snow tomorrow and the next few days, I wouldn't have made it without my internet connection!

A huge kudos to the Qwest crew that came out to hook me back up. They left the truck at the top of the road and chose to walk down my road to survey the damage, concerned they wouldn't be able get the truck down. Their initial plan was to cut up the tree with a chainsaw, after seeing the line running under the fallen pine. But a little further investigation found the wire snapped just on the other side, so he simply pulled it through and decided to run another line further from the tree line. They completed their work in just about an hour, GREAT!

Oh, and last night in the update to the final blogpost I said it had finally stopped snowing, well that only lasted about 15 minutes. And I know because another, smaller piece of the pine tree fell and it was snowing again when I went out to check the damage.

First Fir Casualty

First Pine Casualty

Second Pine Casualty

Comic Relief

In Action

Beautiful Chaos (click to enlarge any of these, but especially this one)