Well that was fun (not!)

[tam91]

So monday 75 mph winds ripped through here.

The good news: My Florida weave held, even though the rows are north to south and the wind was from the west, the tomatoes weren't harmed one bit. So my conversion to Florida weave is now confirmed.

The bad news: Power was out for days. I just got back home. Many, many homes and businesses were out of power here, and many still are. I count my self lucky.

It was a rather interesting project to drive quite a distance from where I was staying, and haul water for 33 tomatoes in containers every day, as it was very hot as well. But, the tomatoes made it through - yay!

[BigBrownDogHouse]

Hi there!

I was wondering about you. We made it through alright. All the tomatoes made it through the storm with very little damage, just a bit bent up. I spent most of Tuesday tying everything back up. I use the staking(super deep) and caging(biggest I can find) method so I think that really helped.

I saw trees down all over town. Our power was out from about 7 in the morning until about 7 at night. No harm done, just getting a bit hot in here and the power went out before I could brew some morning coffee.

Folks were starting to walk down the street pulling coolers. Some neighbors across the street still had power so their freezers were in demand.

Couldn't believe all my tomatoes made it when so many trees in the area did not.
Glad to have the power back on so quick too. I know some people are still waiting.

Glad to hear your tomatoes are doing fine!

Brian

[tam91]

I have some trees down, but luckily I can get in and out of my driveway. This was sure some storm. Didn't move a branch on the tomatoes though!

Glad to hear from you, I was wondering how you were doing also.

[platys]

We were driving back from Colorado, and completely missed the storms. I had no idea anything was up until my neighbor mentioned that a few of the tomato containers fell over. One of them hit my jalepeno, which smushed it a bit, but its coming back. I ended up propping the more unstable buckets up with bamboo poles. The tomatoes that fell over couldn't have cared less.

[BigBrownDogHouse]

Hi Platys!
Did any areas down by you lose power? It appeared on Com Ed's website that it was all up north, about 600,000 customers in all.

Tam91, we have dubbed it the storm that came out of nowhere. I'm a bit of a weather geek and follow the forecast pretty close. I admit I wasn't on my game this past weekend because we had a get-together Saturday night that ran very late and then a friend's graduation party on Sunday.
By the time we got home on Sunday, we just went to bed and never checked the forecast. However, nobody mentioned anything about it coming.

Previously, when I had checked a few days earlier, it was only calling for 20%-30% chance of some rain. Boy, that really changed.

When I woke up Monday, it was just absolutely wild.

Still looks like some folks are cleaning up around town.

[attml]

Way to hang in there! Having no power is no fun! We are truely spoiled and don't realize it until the power goes out! Glad to hear your weave held and that you were able to keep everything going!

[tam91]

Thanks everyone. Lack of power is annoying for sure - but lack of water is the big part for me. Being on well and septic - no power=no water. And my old doggie was thankful for my friends taking us into their air conditioning.

That storm was wild - it went black as night, then the wind came in from all directions - my stupid weather radio didn't work (another project, grr) and I saw those winds and ran for the basement.

Some friends of mine still don't have power - the electric company says this was they worst they've ever had.

[remy]

Wow! I'm glad you and the tomatoes are ok. I can't imagine not having water to take care of all my pots! Hauling enough water would be quite the endeavor.
Remy

[platys]

Luckily, we haven't lost power in any of the storms. Naperville has its own utility company (although I think they just buy power from com ed), and keep the trees really well trimmed away from power lines. Plus, I don't think we've had nearly as awful of storms as the folks up north have had.

[tam91]

They trim the trees here too - brutally actually. But they're basically trimming for limbs falling. We have many entire trees down. Limbs too of course, but also entire mature willow trees, oak trees, etc.

I've never seen winds like that in my life - apparently they literally were (low end) hurrican force.

Anyway, I didn't get too many trees/limbs down, and the tomatoes, dogs, and I are ok, so can't complain.

[BigBrownDogHouse]

Originally Posted by tam91

They trim the trees here too - brutally actually. But they're basically trimming for limbs falling. We have many entire trees down. Limbs too of course, but also entire mature willow trees, oak trees, etc.

I've never seen winds like that in my life - apparently they literally were (low end) hurrican force.

I saw an entire blue spruce yanked out of the ground near the center of town.


I definitely agree about the trimming. McHenry will take your tree in the parkway and turn it into a half tree really quick. My tree out front got chopped back two years ago and it is still all out of shape. We're a block of half trees.

I know that in your area, they have really chopped up the big trees up and down CLR. Even before all the roadwork, it seemed crews were out there all the time trimming back the big boys. Now most of those super big trees have been cut down.

Funny thing was that when I drove into town Tuesday, I saw a tree branch up on top of the electical wires near the Ace Hardware. However, didn't look like any trees were all that close to deposit it there. I'm glad that most of the neighborhood wires are all underground.

[platys]

Our lines run behind our house, so they just trim away at these huge evergreens we have. I think our neighbors end up seeing the lopsidedness. I'm kind of hoping they trim out a really big branch that blocks a lot of sun for a chunk of a day.

[tam91]

Oh, here they just whack off the top half of the tree so it looks stupid. I think they only hire tree trimmers with no sense of beauty whatsoever. I'm all for having the power lines up, but there's trimming and there's trimming.

But when the whole trees go down, so do the lines. Apparently we lost transformers too, not just lines. The traffic signals were out for quite a while, then I heard they were running on generators. Quite a mess.