We Had Some Weather!

It's Not Nice to Fool Mother Nature

We had a microburst happen right next to our cabin. The tree in the photo below that is horizontal fell over. Many a bottle of wine has been finished sitting next to that tree. It’s about a 60-70 foot white spruce tree. A large white pine fell too. Unfortunately, the three dead trees I have to cut down didn’t fall over.

You could smell the heavy scent of pine in the air from the trees falling over. Yes, it did make a bit of a noise. I am grateful it didn’t take out a massive northern white cedar that is growing horizontally out from the shore and over part of our dock. I am also grateful that I put my boat in yesterday. We store it right next to that tree in the winter!

Here is the white pine on the ground.

Here is the stump part of the spruce. It also blew up our dock which was christened Anchor Rock Dock (by Monkey Flower) when it was built. We could sit there and look at the stars. I don’t think the Monkey Flower made it.

Here is a link to a video we got on our Nest cam. It’s still pouring as I write this. My guess is we will get about 6 inches of rain (or more) when it is all said and done.

I guess I don’t mind the work as long as my chainsaws are working. But, I hate the bugs and the mosquitoes are the worst I have ever seen it. There are clouds of them. It’s hard to be outside for any meaningful length of time, even with bug dope on. I have been coming up here for over 50 years and mosquitoes are part of the deal but this year they are having an international convention. Taking care of this tree might be a good job for a tree service.

It was worse inland from what I can gather. Due to the very strong El Nino, they didn’t get much snow up here this winter. Our road is usually closed in the winter and this year it stayed open. Mother Nature is making up for it with rain. It’s rained a ton in the last few months. The ground is super wet. A big wind will topple a tree if it’s not anchored well and this big ole spruce was on the shore and its roots didn’t go deep enough.

Nature is incredibly powerful. We live on a wilderness lake. It’s indeed wilderness. We see moose, bears, wolves, deer, otters, fishers, minks, pine martens, coyotes, owls, and eagles. There is no water skiing or jet skiing on our lake.

Could have been far worse. My boats are okay. My dock is okay. My cabin is okay. We are unharmed. It will be an interesting drive out of here when we do it. Hopefully, there aren’t trees blocking the road and the roads aren’t flooded.

It’s been a nutty couple of weeks. I hit a deer in Colorado on the way up. There was nothing I could do. The buck jumped a foot in front of my truck. I was doing 70MPH. Again, no one was hurt except for the deer who is now dearly departed.

There is a disturbance in the force.