Storm damage Cedar Rapids, IA
- Thread starter heimannm
- Start date
Help Support Arborist Forum:
Ugh....what kind of wind speeds did they record around there?
hoskvarna
Addicted to ArboristSite
Holy s--t... I didn't realize it was that high, no wonder the amount of damage.
BangBang77
The chair is against the wall...
I live about an hour south of Oklahoma City. We had sustained straight line winds of over 105mph for over 1.5hrs last summer and it wrecked our small town. Being in tornado alley, that is some of the worst damage I've seen. Cleaning that mess up in the Oklahoma heat was hell on earth.
I feel for you guys that got hit and am sending prayers your way. Stay safe!!
I feel for you guys that got hit and am sending prayers your way. Stay safe!!
There were some reports of 112 MPH as well, other places it was only 96 MPH. Electricity won't be back for days, cellular service is practically non existent, many streets are still blocked. Unbelievable how much tree debris there is. My daughter and son in law are spending the nights at our home, some 65 miles from the damage, but at least we have power, internet, and food. My wife is watching two of the grandsons during the day while we are working, the third is with his parents in Ohio this week.
The linden in front ended up leaning on the house.
We got that one cleaned up with little collateral damage.
There is a clump of mulberry on the property line, some went in their yard (to the right) , some in the neighbors to the left.
If you look just about in the middle of this photo you can see the utility pole on the back corner of their lot, the wires used to connect just up the roof from where you see the gutter damage.
There's the pole, the wires are under the large birch. They had 5 birch trees in the back yard as well as a small red bud, the mulberry, and a nice oak...all will have to come down as they were badly damaged by the wind.
Looking from the vicinity of the pole back towards the house.
I will get the blow down cleaned up next, then drop the two standing/broken ones where the blow down was. The other two leaning over the house will require some special intervention as will the oak in back. There are a lot of wire running across the back of their lot and a lot of limbs on those wires at the moment.
Mark
The linden in front ended up leaning on the house.
We got that one cleaned up with little collateral damage.
There is a clump of mulberry on the property line, some went in their yard (to the right) , some in the neighbors to the left.
If you look just about in the middle of this photo you can see the utility pole on the back corner of their lot, the wires used to connect just up the roof from where you see the gutter damage.
There's the pole, the wires are under the large birch. They had 5 birch trees in the back yard as well as a small red bud, the mulberry, and a nice oak...all will have to come down as they were badly damaged by the wind.
Looking from the vicinity of the pole back towards the house.
I will get the blow down cleaned up next, then drop the two standing/broken ones where the blow down was. The other two leaning over the house will require some special intervention as will the oak in back. There are a lot of wire running across the back of their lot and a lot of limbs on those wires at the moment.
Mark
Huskybill
Addicted to ArboristSite
We had 60 mph winds hit the northeast last week. At 110 it must be devastating. Maybe it’s good to take out some trees because the winter maybe worse? My trees that split weren’t that healthy.
be careful with those wires! definitely looks like a disaster.
We had similar tornado/straight-line winds come through the Baldwin, MI area 2 years ago, right around this same time of the year (August). Power was out for a week. My FIL had just had a new generator put in, so it ran for a couple hundred hours right away. Luckily it was a smaller unit (single cylinder vs. 2) so it didn't empty the propane tank in doing so. We had to do a ton of cutting ourselves just to made the roads accessible, and try to clear the power line enough so that they could come through and get the power back on. Strangely, the generator kept having faults and could occasionally turn itself off, but then it'd start right back up. A month later, the generator company ended up having to replace the engine under warranty...... dumb luck for us! The technician who came out to do it looked at the hour-meter and scratched his head for a second, and then knew what happened... the thing got quite a workout when brand new and something went wrong right away. Better to have that happen then rather than February when the cabin could freeze solid in a day or 2 and burst pipes everywhere.
We had similar tornado/straight-line winds come through the Baldwin, MI area 2 years ago, right around this same time of the year (August). Power was out for a week. My FIL had just had a new generator put in, so it ran for a couple hundred hours right away. Luckily it was a smaller unit (single cylinder vs. 2) so it didn't empty the propane tank in doing so. We had to do a ton of cutting ourselves just to made the roads accessible, and try to clear the power line enough so that they could come through and get the power back on. Strangely, the generator kept having faults and could occasionally turn itself off, but then it'd start right back up. A month later, the generator company ended up having to replace the engine under warranty...... dumb luck for us! The technician who came out to do it looked at the hour-meter and scratched his head for a second, and then knew what happened... the thing got quite a workout when brand new and something went wrong right away. Better to have that happen then rather than February when the cabin could freeze solid in a day or 2 and burst pipes everywhere.
Also, I hope Verizon and ATT and those are sending out some of their mobile responder trucks and such to get cell service set up (even if only in town-centers or near big businesses like Walmart, etc)..... they should be on it as it's a public safety issue at this point.
@hoskvarna Is that the new shop where the door was ripped off? Sorry about the quonset hut too.
Most of NE Iowa never had cell service to begin with. I was amazed that even many of the small towns had no service when I drive through there.
Most Iowa and Nebraska residents had no warning that this storm was this strong and capable of this much damage. Then it gained strength all the way across Iowa The media was asleep. In fact, we had no storm sirens that sounded as it went through, likely because somebody decided it was not a tornado, so no severe storm warning was required.
Property damage from this storm has not even been mentioned to any degree by any of the local news stations. All we see instead is the China virus and politics. The weathermen who blew the forecast just have smiles on their faces. To me, this is bad judgment and sickening.
Property damage from this storm has not even been mentioned to any degree by any of the local news stations. All we see instead is the China virus and politics. The weathermen who blew the forecast just have smiles on their faces. To me, this is bad judgment and sickening.
Sorry to here and see the destruction stay safe and alert during clean up
We had a storm off the ocean here a few years ago severe micro bursts of 100 mph the trees snapped and uprooted all pointing the same direction
Ive never seen anything like it and since no one was standing in the tree tops with a wind measuring device and damage was mostly wooded areas barely reported here
Sorry to see the devistation.
Hope they have a wood stove/heat.
They'll be set for cordwood , for a few years.
Hope they have a wood stove/heat.
They'll be set for cordwood , for a few years.
To those blaming the weather forecasters, derachos are virtually impossible to predict. Everybody knew conditions were ripe for strong thunderstorms and should have been prepared for the possibility of damaging storms , albeit not on such a large scale. During those conditions it only takes a small, unpredictable disturbance to trigger a series of self-perpetuating storms that very quickly become a deracho. Similar small-scale events that peter out fairly quickly cause what we call "straight line wind" damage. Occasionally conditions are exactly right and allow these storms to expand and feed upon themselves, covering large distances very quickly. We were hit with one in Ohio in June 2012. It started in the midwest (around Chicago?) and went all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. I saw it approaching on radar 50 miles away. 20 minutes later the NW sky went black and you heard a roar coming through the trees. Lost power for 10 days, but luckily no trees hit the house.
NeSurfcaster
ArboristSite Operative
1st I've heard of this and I watch the weather channel pretty much every mornin. You guys definitely got hammered. Around here 50-60 mph gusts are major.
