Stop whistling, that’s enough wind

We awoke today to the sound of wind. Not just any wind, but a wind that roars down the valley and wakes you from a sound sleep. It gains velocity as it falls from the headwall where it spills over into Tennessee from North Carolina; funneling into a steep narrow valley that compresses it, warms it, and accelerates it toward us. Just before it descends upon us, it meets the family compound valley upstream of us. It encounters a slight leveling and widening space there, which is just enough to cause the mass of air to deflect upward a bit so that the higher velocity core is about 30-50 feet above our house as it flies by. Then, downstream of us, the valley widens and the air mass drops closer to ground level. It’s simple micro-climatology, found in every mountain valley. It cools us on hot nights and is welcome. On days like today, driven by cold fronts and steep pressure gradients, it sends limbs flying, blows the tops off trees, and downs huge trees, blocking roads, dropping power lines, and blowing transformers.


I had the alarm set for 0631 today. There was no wind noise when I hit the snooze button. At 0715 our anemometer was showing a 15 mph gust. Loki and I set off down valley to meet Mike at 0930. By then, the trees were pitching and tossing wildly and there was a steady whine from the power, phone, and cable wires as the wind tore past them. It is really impressive to watch the trees in such wind. Some of these trees reach 100 feet in height. It takes tremendous amounts of force to move them, and they require incredible amounts of strength to withstand the wind. The sound of such winds in the dark of night is capable of raising the hair on the back of your neck. It’s a sound o f immense power, of branches rubbing against trees, branches falling in the dark, a rushing, tearing, lonesome sound. The sight of huge trees moving against a dark, cloudy sky brings up primeval unease. It should.

The dog was most unhappy with the wind – she doesn’t like windy weather at all- and tried to keep tightly by my side. The wind gusts were at 30 – 35 MPH by the time we hit our halfway point and turned back up hill. The difficulty from the elevation gain on the road back was compounded by gusts that literally were blowing us back a step if they hit us when we had one foot raised. We were back at the driveway by 1020 and I noticed a branch in the road up valley. I put the dog in and went up to photograph it and move it. This is on the stretch above our driveway, not yet trimmed.

Note that this is dead, blow down. Looking up valley (south

I went inside to show the photo to Gloria. At that point, the power went out of service. After shutting the computers down, and calling the outage in to the power company; I went out to look for any obvious blown transformers, downed wires, or other possible causes. Up valley, perhaps ten feet from the previous blow down, was the entire top of a poplar tree.

View is down valley toward our driveway on right. This completely blocked the road until we dragged it off to one side. It will need to be cut up with a chain saw. I won’t approach it again until the wind is no longer likely to blow other pieces of tree onto us. The interval between moving and photographing the first branch and this falling was no more than ten minutes. Had I been standing under it when it was blown off the tree, about 50 feet above, I’d have been seriously injured.

Power was returned to service about 2 hours later. The wind is still blowing at 10-15 MPH, gusting to 20. We’ve had one power flicker since. I’m hoping that the wind will subside a bit.

It’s a beautiful day, clouds over the mountains against blue sky and brilliant hillsides.

 

View over our roof, eastern valley wall color increasing daily

Looking down valley toward our drive on right. The tall tree on left was partially trimmed yesterday. Immediately after this photo was taken we watched another branch blow off. I suspect it will be taken down next week. If it blows over, it will drop the power lines (upper left)

In light of yesterday’s conflict with our neighbor, we pulled our copy of our property deed to review. There was a note that “water rights” from a spring on our property had been “sold to neighbor across the road a long time ago but were not in use” as of our closing date. We had no problem with that. We still wouldn’t if not for his behavior. However, he no longer uses the spring for drinking water – it is not safe or continual in nature. He currently has county water piped in. So our position is that no property possession was conveyed with water usage rights. We’ve printed that page of our closing documents, along with a copy of the survey. We think we have legal possession. The title search we paid for at closing found no conflicts in the last 33 years.

In fact, we closed on this property 3 years ago today.

This is the view from the northwest corner of our property looking up valley (south). Our driveway is about 25 meters past the leftward bend visible above. This is part of the property our neighbor has claimed is his.

Dinner tonight will be Posole. To the ample amount left over from the other night, I’ll add chicken stock, more hominy, and cilantro. I’ve removed some sirloin from the freezer for tomorrow night.

Stand by for more “Adventures from Moose Byte Scrawls.”


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