Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Too Much Wind!

We got wind last night.

A lot of wind.

The kind of wind that causes your jaw to drop when you walk outside the next morning.


Now, I'm used to high winds.  Being from the desert southwest I've driven through duststorms that cause nearly zero visibility.  The winds there sometimes feel as though they're going to pick your car up and take it with them.  I once had to swerve to avoid a table umbrella that flew straight toward my car after being picked up from somebody's yard.

I know wind.

I was not, however, expecting to see similar wind strength in the home I'm currently renting.  Yes, I know that this area has a higher than average chance of tornados.  Sure, Minnesota is one of the highest producers of wind power.  That doesn't mean that I'd make the correlation between these things and the weather I experienced last night...

Ok, yeah...  I'm not always the sharpest knife in the drawer.

The thing is... the wind didn't seem particularly rough.  Wind here is very different from wind in my former home.  Here, the wind is consistently strong.  You don't notice any increase in strength because there's a slow build.  My old home had wind that would come in bursts.

So you can imagine my surprise when I walked outside this morning and discovered this:

 
The very heavy patio glider on the porch had toppled over.  It was in just the perfect spot to get carried by the wind when it was at its strongest point.  I heard the bang when it happened as I was laying in bed, trying to fall asleep.  I just assumed the sound I heard was a branch that had been knocked out of one of the gigantic trees in the yard.  There are several branches that seem to hang precariously, waiting to fall to the ground. 

Looks like I was wrong.

Surprisingly, none of my half-jugs were blown away.  My seedlings are all still securely nestled in their containers.

Now that I know what the wind here is capable of, however, I know to plan accordingly.

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