Anyway, here I am again....
I spent Saturday helping out at a conference were people discussed the long term effects of the Great Storm of '87 on woodland.
The Great storm saw Hurricane-force winds ripping across my part of England, damaging houses and blowing down trees. A number of people were killed, and actually Mrs RC and I both had a near miss.
Our older daughter was only a few months old and was in bed and we could hear the wind blowing outside. Worried about our ferret who was in the garden, I popped out to check on him while Mrs RC watched out of the window that was above our back door.
Just after I got back inside, a garden shed from a house across the street was lifted into the air and hit the roof above the window where Mrs RC was standing, the debris falling onto the path outside the door below. A little lower and it would have it the window and Mrs RC. I little earlier and it would have landed on me!
The ferret was fine, by the way.
One sad thing about the storm was that afterwards there was a massive clean up and lots of fallen trees were cut up and burnt. I guess that at the time few realised that a fallen tree does not always die. It only needs a small proportion of its roots to remain intact to carry on growing, like this one that was left.
OK, time for a bath, I think!
Have a great day!
7 comments:
I didn't know that a fallen tree could survive and continue growing! That sounds like one very nasty storm... sort of like some of the tornadoes we get around here, with whole towns being demolished. Mother Nature is an unpredictable thing.
I remember that storm. I didn't live in UK at the time, but there was a lot on the TV news here and I heard a number of horror stories from UK rellies.
(Thanks for including the ferret's status).
Storms like that are so scary - really a taste of how small we are! Interesting tree. I wonder what it would say if it could talk.
Terri - Amazing, isn't it? Locally it seems that around 2 thirds if fallen trees survived, if allowed to.
Shammickite - It was a huge event - and I won't even mention Michael Fish! :-)
Abby - "I'm not dead!" ?
As scary as those storms can be, I find them very interesting. Whenever we're in a tornado warning,I send the kids to the basement, and I stay upstairs staring out the windows. You all had too close of a call though. Happy everyone was okay - including the ferret.
That tree is a fighter. I like it's determination!
ShadowRun300 - I must admit that I would find it hard to resist a chance of a good photo - meanwhile, my wife would like to go storm chasing! Not sure about actually going after them...
Trees can survive a lot of turmoil. Many of the older tress have the ability to bend with the wind and adapt. Reminds me of the old expression, we all must learn to bend to change or we will break with the wind. We still see damage from our past few hurricanes (Rita, Ike). Riding out those storms gives us stories to pass along to our children.
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