Wind Armageddon

Today at home base on Parleys Terrace, 95 mph wind gusts whipped through Salt Lake.  Hurricane speeds.  We estimate between 7am and 8am the worst damage was done to our neighborhood and two lovely trees in our backyard.  Here is way too many pictures for you to look at.  Oh and for those of you who stopped checking the blog, Danny has a very nice post he put up two days ago you all should go look at and no, it is not one of his DIY home improvement projects, it's of his cute kids and we even get a sighting of Rich on the blog.  Woah!

The Before Picture (and check out all those pea-pods!)

After picture.  That tree looks lonely.  Lets get Bob Ross to fix this painting; every happy tree needs a friend.

Both major trees that went down, also took out the power line that went along back there.

I'm 6'3" (taller than both Rich and Dan ha) so there's your reference point.

Close up of the damage to the tree, sprinklers (dang), the power line is actually broken (top left of the picture) and the cracked cement curb. 

Remember the top of the dirt is probably 8' and the roots extend at least to 10'.   Oh and the grass is torn up. 

Trees are heavy

 Now here are a few shots of the neighborhood.  There was serious destruction and it seemed like our neighborhood was ground zero.  

Enslin's big tree.  It crumbled some cement as the roots came up and rumor has it that it was on top of cars, but I never saw cars under it.  

The Big Nasty is down.  That is the big tree between the Wade's and the Enslin's.  The Wade's also lost one on the other side of their driveway.  See below.  Unfortunately their weird lady water statue survived.  

Both trees from Rich Adam's yard.  Good thing he retired long ago and didn't need to go to work.  

This one cause some serious alarm.  This is on the side of the Enslin's house and the tree fell across power lines and onto the Wade's house.  This one actually started a fire but was quickly controlled.  I don't know the extent of the damages.  

Looks like the big tree swing at the Warner's (Stillman's) house has finally swung its last swing.  Mom said that is some special breed of tree that is super heavy.

Big tree meets smaller house on Stringham Ave.  

On Dallin St.

These big hunks fell onto the Owen's house.  That is easily 20 feet in diameter and 10 feet in the air.  They had two trees fall onto their house.  The 2nd is just out of the picture frame to the left.  

The second huge tree on the Owen's house.

Two trees at the Nowell's house.

Quick view of the shallow roots of the trees that fell in front of the Wade's house.

Alice Anderson joined in on the fun

Another one bites the dust!

 Probably 15 trees were down in the two blocks around our house.  That is only the front yard trees that we could see.  Many more are likely down that nobody can see from the street like our house.  It's crazy!