Winter Winds

Here on Point Roberts, we have the ocean on three sides and, although every ocean side is within easy walking distance, I rarely have much to do with the water parts.  I live up in the middle in the middle of the trees.  I am the kind of person who has a lot of fir and cedar branches everywhere when we have a big wind, as we did this week.  If you are down very near the water, it is different.  It is not the trees but the actual ocean you have to worry about. 

This past Sunday night storm was one of the noisiest and frightening we've ever been here for.  It sounded to me as if there was a jumbo jet constantly passing over us; to Ed, it sounded more like a train constantly going by, a steady sound that you heard underneath the sound of big gusts of wind through the trees.  I don't know what it would sound like down by the ocean where you don't get the amplification from the trees.  Of course, you get the crashing waves, and both the sound and sight of them in a big wind can be very fearsome.  Fortunately, the Sunday night wind stopped on the Monday morning and the high tides did not lead to significant flooding because the wind's direction did not push the water toward the shore.

Two years ago, it was much worse because the wind was pushing the water and there was lots of flooding.  And lots of damage.  Could, doubtless will, happen again.  But even despite the speed of the winds, we had very little tree branch shedding at our house.  There was one 8-foot or so branch, maybe 3-inches in diameter that came down right next to the car, but not on it; on it could have caused some damage.  The branch was big and heavy, but not too heavy for me to move it back to the downed branches pile.  And other than that, there were only small fir and cedar pieces (lots of them), very small pieces, all over the yards.  In the big winds a couple of years ago, two of our neighbors had large, severed tree branches shoot down through their roofs like javelins, a performance requiring considerable repair in the one case and a new roof in the other.  So we are glad this week, in a week when we are hearing a lot about natural disaster, not to have had one, even on a small scale.