Oct 16 / 17 2019 Nor'Easter

[mustash29]

Wednesday evening it started sprinkling on my way home from work. An impending "no name" Nor'easter was blowing in from the south. I think the news said the central pressure dropped something like 36 millibars in 20 hrs or something close to that. It was quick but strong.

About midnight the dogs woke us up. Winds whipping HARD with the "freight train" sound, limbs and trees snapping, crap bouncing off the house, etc. I called out and took Thursday off.

On the other side of the street from our driveway is a knee deep ditch that contains runoff during heavy rains and such. There WAS a huge 20" diameter hickory who's root ball was adjacent to the ditch. The hickory blew over at midnight, landed on the power lines, took out one of the 2 power cables plus the cable & internet. The landline phone was still working. The tree was still hanging on the other power wire, but lying caddy corner across the road at the end of our driveway with the crown of the tree in the strip of woods that separates our front yard from the road. The other power line was still hot with 4800 volts, giving off a nice arcing, sparking & pretty blue glow as it burnt its way into the bark of the tree and caught the tree on fire. We made the initial report to 911. I guess 911 got ahold of the power company because the power line finally went dead about 20 or 30 minutes later. About an hour later it had rained enough that the tree trunk was no longer smoldering and emitting embers. We were done playing "fire watch" and went back to bed.

Thursday 0630 - Dogs are doing their business in the front yard as some butt-hole comes flying up the road doing about 50 + despite the storm still raging, storm debris all over the place and totally ignoring the 25 mph speed limit. I could hear him accelerating up the hill hard and hear all of the sticks, limbs and road debris getting kicked up into his fenders. He slams on the brakes at the last minute, only stopping about one car length away from bouncing off the tree and skidding into our driveway. I had a nice batch of "super kind words" to say to that stupid motorist.

 

[mustash29]

About 0715 the power line went live for about 15 minutes, starting arcing, and caught the hickory on fire again. About 0800 some jacka55 neighbor up the road and his teenage daughter started cutting up the tree limbs to get one lane of the road open. I hollered at him 3 times to stop. He had no clue if the power was on, off, or if grounding cables had been installed to make the mess safe to work on. He didn't care. He "had someplace to be."

We both took Thurs off, fired up the generator, showered, put the Coleman camp stove on top of the electric stove to cook breakfast, then went about checking on neighbors. Everyone else was fine and had generators. The lady south of us had a good sized pine tree on her roof but it didn't poke through. We took a round about drive to get more gas for the generator and got Subway. There were more trees down north of us. I heard that Rt 49 north of Voluntown was really, really bad with trees smashing houses and all sorts of chaos.




We completed our damage assessment and took pictures for insurance documentation. The S-10 suffered two dents to the side of the bed, a dent to the hood, broken bug guard & broken plastic around the wipers. The diesel has a broken window rain guard and a big dent in the top of the passenger door frame but at least the glass didn't break. Giant tree in the front yard has two big limbs snapped off and dangling by a thread. They need taken down before they fall on their own and take out the service wiring to the house. It could have been MUCH worse.

 

[mustash29]

We spent Friday cleaning up the yard. Put the vintage early '90's Troy-Bilt Super Tomahawk Pro 12 hp chipper to use for about 4 hours and got rid of all of the piles of tree limbs and crap that accumulated since last spring plus the storm debris. It was still rather breezy by late afternoon but I mowed just to chop up leaves and blow them off the lawn. Asplundh removed the hickory from the wires. The state DOT chipped up the brush that was on our side of the road.



Power came back on Late Friday night, about midnight. Cable & internet were restored Sat by noon.

We spent the rest of Saturday finishing our clean up. The far side of the road was still marked with cones due to the remaining brush pile. The state DOT workers didn't chip that stuff Friday due to "dead" wiring still in the vicinity. Hopefully they come back soon to finish cleaning it up.

My better half was playing traffic control for me.



I christened my new MS-391 w/ 20" bar that I got last fall on the hickory and hauled it all across the road and into the back yard with my new bucket loader. I figure we got close to a cord out of it. We mowed again and did a thorough lawn & leaf clean up.



Sunday was laundry, house, garage & tool clean up day.

All told, it was an eventful few days. It could have been much worse. Many thanks to the fine tool manufacturers that I have in my arsenal to attack these kinds of issues. John Deere, Little Buck Loader, Stihl, Troy-Bilt and of course my significant other keeping me fed, hydrated and helping to look out for my well-being.

 

[mustash29]

Pretty much all cleaned up, just have some splitting left to do so I can burn this stuff in a few years.

 

[HisTreeNut]

Not the best way to get a bunch of hickory...glad you and your other half are ok.


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