tempest

As a throwback to my first posts on this blog, I shall take some time to record the worst windstorm in living memory that hit us this week. We’re no stranger to windstorms this time of year that swoop in without warning and strip the leaves off all the trees. A mid-to-late-November windstorm each year is fall’s way of pulling all-nighters to make sure the assignment is finished before winter. This one, however, was unprecedented—and almost slipped completely under my radar. Some of my transplant coworkers were talking about a hurricane being in the offing, and I scoffed. We don’t get hurricanes in Seattle. Then I looked it up. It was a bomb cyclone. Nowhere near as bad as a hurricane, but you’d be pardoned for calling the thing that hit us a hurricane in the wake of all the damage it left behind.

 

Trees fell like bowling pins. At least 10 fell in our backyard alone. Our lawn is almost completely buried under fallen trees right now. One of my favorites, a giant sequoia, whose growth I’ve been documenting for the past ten years, fantasizing about a point in the future when it reached the legendary longevity of its kin in California, was toppled by two unwieldy cypresses in our neighbor’s yard. There’s no propping it back up the way we’d prop the tree I planted in our yard in Hyderabad over and over again.

The worst storm we’d had before this was a winter storm in early 2020. There wasn’t even rain this time around, and still it managed to beat it in terms of deforestation. The main road outside our subdivision was blocked by fallen trees at intervals that had taken out our power and Internet lines. A woman down the road was tragically killed when a tree fell on her house while she was in the shower. Local news reporters came by to report on the story. They found my dad and me and several neighbors chatting in the middle of the road in what the reporter described as resembling the set of The Walking Dead and interviewed us. Well, interviewed my neighbor. I was asked to interview, but I got flustered and said I’d be content to stand in the background. I did appear on TV for all of 30 seconds, though, and, but for my awkwardness, might have become known to the entire city.

Here are some pictures, lest you think I’m exaggerating.

Addendum: Remind me never to badmouth Idaho again. They sent some of their sons to get our power lines back up, since we were short-staffed.