Well, That Was Kind of Scary!

So, we had a kind of crazy experience on Saturday afternoon!

I was standing in the kitchen, assembling chicken kabobs about an hour before friends were coming over for dinner, just as a thunderstorm rolled in. We had been watching the weather radar all day, to make sure we would still be able to grill outside, and it was looking like the storm would pass over in about an hour, followed by relatively clear skies.

We don't tend to get much wind at our house, but when we do during storms, it's a pretty neat sight to see all of the trees in our woodsy backyard waving in the wind. And we have the typical-of-a-wooded-yard large amount of sticks and branches that fall when it's windy out.

But as I was prepping dinner on Saturday during the beginning of the thunderstorm, I saw out our kitchen window a larger than normal branch fall on our clothesline.

Photo of the downed clothesline taken from the deck the next day.

The branch startled me, but wasn't a huge deal, especially since I'd been wanting my husband to take down the clothesline (which we'd inherited when we bought the house, had never used, and referred to as the "zip line" since it ran from the side of the house to a tree) forever.

This fallen branch was just the opening act though. But it prompted both of us to go over to the sliding glass doors to peer more closely out at the storm for a minute. Putting us in prime location for the main event, watching with mouths agape as an over 50 foot tree fell into our yard!

Yes, this giant log below is what we got to witness falling toward our deck. And yes, we definitely heard the tree fall, it was loud, and took out several smaller trees on its way down!

It was actually a dead tree that we already knew about, which was just over our property line. We had inspected it long ago, and knew it wasn't tall enough to hit our house if it ever fell (but would definitely hit two of our neighbor's homes if it fell in the wrong direction!). And since it wasn't on our property, we decided not to worry about it after we discovered its existence.

I've long been paranoid of a tree falling on our house though, especially since it seems someone is always getting killed in our state by a tree falling on them during tornadoes. But our friends were on their way over and I had dinner to finish making, so I told my husband to keep watching and yell at me if I needed to run out of the kitchen because another tree was falling on the house this time.

Of course, after that all was fine, the storm quickly passed over, and we had a nice dinner (inside!) with our friends. And yesterday morning we had the chance to go inspect the crazy fallen tree.

Just off our deck, you can see it demolished a small, also already dead tree.

And the giant tree was broken into several sections when it fell. We'd often seen woodpeckers on the tree when it was standing, so I'm sure it was full of holes, making it easier for it to break when it hit the ground.

Looking further down the slope of our backyard at the log.

And back up at the deck. We knew we weren't in danger of it hitting us, but still a little too close for comfort, and still scary to witness it falling!

More small trees that it took down on its fall.

Yep, the log just kept going and going down the slope! 

And here's a look at it from the bottom of the slope, with our property line just a few feet up from the stump.

Rascal is behind the stump, checking things out

For reference to the shear size of the log, I made my husband pose with it. The kitties were also having fun walking up and down the log--I'm pretty sure they think it's just a new jungle gym for them to play on.

So, that was our kind of scary, crazy Saturday afternoon! And now we're the proud new owners of a ginormous log in our backyard. Not that it's the first log we have back there, we already had several, and think it just makes the area look more woodsy and natural. But we will be clearing out the small trees that went down, and chopping them up to burn in our fire pit. Hey, at least we get some free firewood out of the ordeal!

Have you ever witnessed a tree falling over? I don't think this is going to do anything to help my tree falling paranoia the next time we have a wind storm!