Wicked Windy Weather

Utah has been making weather headlines for the hurricane-like winds that blew all night Wednesday and Thursday morning.

The newspaper gave the following report for wind gusts:

Weber Canyon, 66 mph
Farmington, 84 mph
Centerville, 102 mph
Bountiful, 78 mph
U of U, 69 mph
Millcreek, 47 mph
Hurricane, 65 mph

(Note: a 100 mph wind gust is the same as a Category 2 hurricane.)

Not even the city named Hurricane experienced as much wind as we had around this area. It was brutal and relentless for many, long hours.

I checked with my parents and they were without power all day long yesterday--and that was with my poor mother being sick and feeling quite rotten. I'm sure it made her happy to finally have heat and lights once again last night.

Our power went out yesterday morning for one minute--just long enough to make me have to go around and reset all the clocks in the house.

We did have a loss. The cover blew off our grill and I can't see it anywhere. I must admit that the thing was old and had several rips in it and we needed a new one because this one wasn't really protecting the grill hardly much at all. So, I think I'll say--good riddance to that old, tattered cover. The wind actually helped us not have to deal with throwing the thing away.

Other people didn't fare quite as well as we did. I drove around today looking at the damage and saw lots of people with many shingles blown off their homes. There were lots of tree branches that needed to be cleaned up and tons of trees that had blown over. It looks like the trees that fell into the roads and onto the power lines have been dealt with. Now it's all the other ones that are down that need to be taken care of.

I heard on the news last night that Davis County has been declared an emergency and all the schools were closed today. I also saw on the news that the cemetery right behind South Davis Junior High, where Sarah and Ben went to school, received a lot of damage.

The Bountiful Memorial Park is the cemetery I enjoy walking through. I love that cemetery and I was so sad today when I saw all the trees that are down.

Trash and shingles had blown everywhere and were littering the lawn of the cemetery.

The trees had toppled over on top of headstones and some of them were peeking out from beneath the branches.

This tree came very close to this tall tombstone.

My friend, Tricia, had gotten her neighbor kids to go out "disaster chasing" with her. She had these kids climb up on the trees to take pictures of them to send to her own kids so they can see the destruction.

I told her to take a picture of this guy to send to her missionary son. He is one of the full-time missionaries serving in this mission who got asked to help out with the clean-up efforts. His companion was close by--in the next tree--using another chain saw to cut all the branches off the tree.

The cemetery had a row of huge trees growing along the sidewalk by the road. Now this is the view along the sidewalk of those same trees all toppled over.

The golf course up on the hill had its fair share of trees down as well. So SAD!!