Back on the 28th of June, 1.6" fell in a bit over a half hour.
Probably a bit more moisture, if one could measure the hailstones. It hailed all during the rain fall. It started with pea size hail and ended with a lot of 3/8" diameter hail. I found some photos of a lot of hail from the summer of 2010. I don't recall it happening, but I guess it did.
Wednesday of this past week was hot and humid with the NWS suggesting some heavy rainfall. Just after noon it started getting dark in the northwest. I was mowing pretty far from the shop. I started finding places to mow closer to the shop. The first cell passed to the north. I didn't see any lightning. I even stopped the mower a couple times to listen for thunder . . . nothing.
Then it started getting dark in the west. Still no lightning, but I found some grass that needed mowed even closer to the shop. Finally I saw a very long bolt to the south where the sky was still pretty bright. Got to the shop just as it was starting to sprinkle. Then it cut loose . . . heavy and straight down. It let up quite a bit, so a couple of us made a run for it to our trucks. Didn't get to far from the course when the wind picked big time. It was blowin my Ranger all over the road. It began rainin so hard that is was very difficult to see. The trees were whippin around so hard, that I thought I was gonna see a few fall. It seemed to be a sustained, very high wind. I got home ok.
It lasted 30-40 minutes. Dropped 1.5" on my yard with no hail. The catch basin in my back yard and the street backed up like they usually do every couple years during these hard rains. Lookin at previous photos of back ups, I think this was the highest back up. The storm water goes to the ditch behind the houses across the street which goes to the retention pond. When it comes down fast, everything backs up for a bit.
This is the street taken from my garage.
From previous storm's pics, I think this as high it has been since I've lived here. If you look close you can see just a bit of the retaining wall I built.
This is an 'after it drained off pic."
After the sun came out, I heard reports of the wind blowing 10 cars off the railroad tracks by the golf course. So I grabbed my camera and headed out. Couldn't see any derailed cars due to crops, etc. The railroad people were starting to get to the scene. The heavy equipment hadn't arrived yet, just lights, a couple backhoes, crane trucks and lots of workers.
I saw trees on a couple houses out there and there were at least 5 electric poles beside the tracks broken. I found out later that there were several broken poles along area roads.
Lots of clean up to do at the golf course. We are working 2-4 hours each morning on that, then mow the rest of the day. There are only fours of us to keep things decent. We usually have 6-7 workers this time of year. The course has finally transferred to the new owner this past week. He said we would be the first to know when it was gonna open. He gave the ok to try to hire our mechanic back. We need him bad! We also need parts for the the ailing mowers so he can fix them. The new owner buys properties and tries to sell them as soon as possible. He has been trying to sell the course since he won the auction. He hasn't received any interest at his asking price. So he is gonna open it. He has never run a golf course. It isn't a cheap operation!! We can make it work, if he spends the money.
Anyway, I had a camera with me Thursday PM and this is some of what I saw.
A couple of the crab apple trees that will soon be history. They are a real pain to mow around. Not gonna miss them. The new owner is debating whether to rename the place or keep the name "Orchard Hills." I mentioned to him that the orchard was getting pretty thin after this week's winds.
Another big limb of the willow in front of the 6th hole came down. Not much left to it anymore. They say that at it's peak, it was a beautiful tree. Over on 16, a neighbor's willow tree split. It just missed on of those greenish phone thing-a-ma-jigs that you see on corners. Bustin that up would have put a lot of land lines out of service.
This dead pine broke off about 4' up. It is up by the 6th green.
One of many large limbs that blew down. Lots of small twigs everywhere. Those are the back killers!!
This is a fairly large dead ash. I always wondered how we were gonna cut it down without crushing any of those cedars that don't belong to the course. It had a heavy lean toward that house. We finished that clean up yesterday AM. We used twine to tie the damaged cedars together. Time will tell if they survive without any limbs dieing.
So with the combination of a busted seat on my mower -- I have it propped up so it won't move. there is no flex in it and I am essentially sitting on the frame-- and a tired back from picking up twigs, one could say that I'm on the demolished side of tired.
No rest for the demolished . . . Gotta go mow greens at 6:30 tomorrow. If the other greens mower works, I'll be done around 8. If not, I'll hafta mow them all by myself and be done around 9:30.
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