Drinking first cup of coffee. 66° with clear skies this morning. Heading to 71° with possibility of rain in afternoon. Very nice day yesterday. Got the things I was saving for today done. Another good day to relax on the back porch. The warm weather has brought a couple of fish out from there hiding places in our garden Pond.
Irv, I am surprised by all the winter damage you have. There is next to nothing here. Less than 20 miles away.
Good Morning All.
The damage is all in one type of tree, white pine. The folks who built the house planted a bunch of them, including a windbreak about 1000 ft long, on the west side of the property. The branches seem to be a bit weak, I've lost some branches in other winters, but nothing like this year. We got a freezing rain / snow storm, and when I walked outside, it sounded like gunshots going off. Once one branch gave way, it fell on one lower, and that one gave way.... Some trees I have been taking down, half or more of the branches ended up in piles at the base of the tree. I have a couple of trees that were damaged in previous years, they just got worse. I think part of the problem is how the trees were planted, in a narrow row, running north to south. The trees ended up with very long branches running east and west, and the trees don't seem to be able to support them very well, when laden with lots of snow. They are beautiful trees, but the ones that survive the best are the ones in clumps, the trees appear to support each other somewhat. On the other hand, a couple in the middle of the yard are very healthy, losing few if any branches. They don't have branches reaching out so far. Some of the trees have branches that are 30 ft long, the trees are maybe 70 ft tall.
We did have a lot of overall damage here, we lost power for 6 days in November, and 7 days in December. Worst year for pwer outage ever, and it was largely due to trees falling on lines. One problem the utility had was that normally they would get crews out of Indiana to help. But this winter, storms knocked out power there and Illinois also. The crew who put the line back on the pole down the road from me was from western Michigan, a contract group, not utility guys. I watched them do it, the line was down in a swampy area, and they couldn't get a bucket truck close enough. So the had guys with poles lifting the wire, and guys on ladders connecting it back up to the pole.
My wife's shop is 5 miles away, near I96. It never lost power, not for a minute. But her shop has DTE power, home has Consumers. Lansing had areas out for 10 days, I believe.
