Monday, December 10, 2007

Blown Off The Grid

In the late hours of Sunday, December 2nd, an intense Pacific storm battered the coasts of Oregon and Washington with wind gusts exceeding 100 MPH. The local airport in Astoria recorded a wind gust of 85 MPH before the station's data link was severed.

As we live on Astoria's north slope, we tend to be sheltered from the winter's strongest winds. Despite this, my weather station still registered a gust of 46 MPH. Throughout the night, the side of our house was pelted with shingles torn from our neighbor's roof. The winds also deposited numerous trash cans as well their content into our side yard.

The following pictures shows the neighboring duplex with a sixty foot tall red cedar crushing the roof.

Needless to say, it will be a long time before these units are once again livable!

The storm also trashed the power distribution system, especially on the south slope of the city; we were without power for four days. It certainly could have been much worse especially when you consider the damage to the southeastern states in 2005.

1 comment:

Paul said...

Wow! Four days off of the grid. It would be an interesting experiment. I wonder if my son would survive it! :-) I'm pretty sure that he would, but he probably thinks that he wouldn't! Hey, he might even pick up a book or perhaps go to bed at a reasonable hour! ;-)