They Fell Like Raindrops

Our driveway looked sort of like this...except worse.

About two weeks ago, a severe storm hit the Fredericktown, Missouri area. Micro-bursts of wind caused a lot of damage, including a collapsed church. Our river property is just 10 miles outside of town, but it's near the river with lots of granite around, so we thought it would be okay. On Friday, we drove down for the weekend.

We were wrong.

Traveling down Highway 72, trees were uprooted everywhere...enormous ones with huge trunks. Pines and Hickory trees were especially hard hit. Apparently the rain-saturated soil and high winds simply pushed them over. We grew more anxious the closer we got as we saw the damage.

When we arrived, we couldn't even go down the driveway. More trees were down than I could count. Two of them were across the drive. The root ball on one of them was nearly as tall as me. Trees that had grown for many years were destroyed in seconds. And to complete the picture, electricity was non-existent.

We had a group of friends joining us for the weekend, and luckily, they are wonderful people who don't simply come down to play. As soon as they got word, chain saws buzzed and the drive was swiftly cleared of debris so we could drive on it. I'm grateful for the hard work they put in...and on a holiday weekend, no less! The electric company also responded quickly (they'd been working pretty much 24/7 since the storm), especially since we only have a weekend place and not a permanent residence. As a matter of fact our neighbors reported it took 2 weeks for them to get power back, and this is their full time home!

Meanwhile, there's tons more to be done. Numerous other BIG trees were uprooted, but didn't fall to the ground because they banged into another tree and are basically being propped up as though in suspended animation. We'll have to be careful in order to avoid the domino effect as we work to get them down.

I can only imagine how scary it must have been when the storm occurred. With all the cracking and falling trees it must have sounded like a war zone and it certainly looks like one! The storm has caused a lot of grief for humans, and so much natural habitat for critters has been destroyed.

It was the awesome power of Mother Nature in action. Fortunately there were no major injuries. But there sure will be a lot of clean-up to do.