Apologies for the long delay in providing an update. We were without electricity/internet/cell service up until late yesterday.
Damage report is minimal:
- A broken limb poked a large hole in the backside roof of the guest house. The limb must have snapped and then fell much later after the brunt of the strom had passed as there was no interior water damage from the heavy rains.
- 10 years ago I planted a dozen Leland Cypress trees along the property line to create a privacy wall. As the trees matured this idea worked out great. Not so much anymore... the winds up-rooted and bent over most of the now 20+ foot tall trees. We were able to use the Jeeps winch to stand some of the lesser damaged trees back up, but we had to cut the rest down.
- The greenhouse lost a few clear roof panels.
- In the front yard a 110 foot 80 year old Poplar tree snapped at about the 40 foot mark and the upper 70 feet started to fall towards the front of the house before it got caught up in an adjacent tree. This was probably the most significant event. Cutting down a tree that is broken halfway up is not a fun task. With a tree rope, the Jeep pulling and a couple cuts on the base of the tree, we got it to fall exactly where we wanted it without any property damage.
- The yard/property looks like a war zone from all of the broken tree limbs laying around.
We pretty much took a direct hit. Guess what? It was windy and it rained. LOL. We lost power early Saturday morning. I spent Sunday and Monday fixing the above areas and am happy to be sitting at the office today. I don't believe I have the energy left in me to run a chainsaw for another day. The heavy rain that I feared never materialized. We got ~7 inches and our stream rapidly cleared all of the rain water off the property. The Sound behind the property did surge significantly, but not enough to affect me.
Some of our neighbors were much less fortunate than us. I drove around a little bit late yesterday and the falling tree damage is extensive. Firewood will be real cheap this year! On a 2 mile long road next to our house, with approx. 500 homes, there has to be easily over 1000 trees down and 100 of the houses with some kind of wind/tree related damage.
Thanks for the well wishes from everyone and Gabby and I have decided that if a Cat 3 storm ever bears down on us we will definitely be evacuating inland!