The Santa Ana winds started blowing Wednesday evening (November 30) while I was announcing D. West’s selection for the Rotsler Award. I should have recognized it as an omen.
By morning we’d lost electricity, a small tree had tilted onto Diana’s car, and the tree beside it would have needed only a little encouragement to follow the example. Fortunately we were able to free car with the help of a passerby (our retired postman) and it suffered no damage. Can’t say the same for the tree.
Throughout the region power was down and hundreds of trees shattered — 400 on Pasadena city streets alone, hundreds more in South Pasadena and Arcadia. We have high-intensity windstorms a couple of times a year and they usually take out a few trees — never anything on this order of damage. Lynn Maudlin, who has lived in Altadena for a few decades, says she went through an even more damaging windstorm in the 1980s. But it’s certainly the worst since Diana and I moved to Monrovia in 1998.
Electricity came back on Friday morning (December 2). Because our home computer network had been out of whack before the storm, it took some time to get that fully functional again, as it now seems to be thanks to Diana. And I will soon I will be posting news again.
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Glad you’re back. Long outages are a real pain. I experienced the trees down everywhere thing outages an ice storm years ago. The streets where I lived never looked quite the same again, though maybe in a few decades they will. Hope you don’t have too much to remove from your own property. Are you sure that wind blast that knocked the tree onto Diana’s car didn’t result from your opening D West’s letter?
Great relief on reading that the car (and yourselves) suffered no damage. For the trees, Fangorn weeps.
I’m glad Diana’s car was essentially undamaged, and I’m glad your home network is back up. Good for you on both!
I’m always amazed at how many trees we lose – and how many trees remain! I wonder what positive purpose (if any) such big winds serve in the ecosystem. And I’m grateful that I was powerless for only 60 hours; there are still some folks in Altadena without power, which speaks to the complexity of power lines, big wind and downed trees (as opposed to an “operator error” which led to the big outtage back in October, coming out of Arizona – and that still took them about a day to power back up).
Wow, Mike! Have you *always* operated on Greenwich Mean Time?!
Me and Mister Grinch!
(But I actually think I’m on Laotian time, or so I’ve been told.)
The time stamps on these e-mails provide official alibis for posters doing illegal things. (This written at 9:51pm NY Time)