Trees keep falling (but so far, not on my head)

A few days ago, we had a wicked bad line of storms come through here.  Some might even decide that there were tornadoes, or mini-cyclones, or whatever you'd like to call them, imbedded in the front, or the rear, or wherever in a storm line those twisters tend to hang out.  It's been 23 years since I lived in big time tornado territory, so I'm losing my grasp of the details, but I have seen them up close and personal.  Based on some of the trees, or what's left of them, I think there were tornadoes here.

Several were in almost a straight line, pointing to the coast.  One guy I talked to told me there was another one, further along the route, and, since he lives on the water, he saw waterspouts or funnels or twisters out there, too.

I also find it interesting that each tree, as it fell, is pointing in the same direction.

So here's the first I found, in geographical sequence.  Luckily, it missed the house, and the cars that were parked in the area.

Next, this one is a particularly hard type of hardwood tree.  Or, it was.  So far, they've left the trunk standing, after removing the fallen top of the tree.  This one took down the power lines, so I wasn't able to get in to get a picture until later in the day.

Next, a kind of conifer that is in the park near our local middle school.  It also missed anything vital, and the top actually landed just beyond the end of the fence.

And then the biggie, which is out of the straight line, but also obviously subjected to severe twisting to get it to fall.  It's in a graveyard, next to a church that to me looks like the stage set for Verdi's Stiffelio.  I took the laying down picture the other day, and today got around the end to see what actually happened.  Whole lotta twisting going on.  Again, it didn't take out anything vital, and I suppose the folks buried where it fell didn't even notice.

Meanwhile, in other areas, a lot of power lines were knocked down, and in some areas, the cable lines came down, while the electric stayed up.  Crazy business, these storms lately.  Climate change, indeed.

Nothing much happened at my house.  Couple of small branches landed in the yard, and the doggo took care of those.  He considers them crunchy veggies.  And my gutters need to be cleaned out, but try and get someone to come do that.  They're all too busy with real work to be bothered.  So that will have to wait.

Today it's rainy, in instalments.  We're expecting some kind of tropical storm coming up the coast in the next few days, but that's not where today's rain is coming from.  And it's finally a bit cooler, but you'd really never notice, because the humidity is so high.  We're turning tropical, or sub-tropical, at least.  Yuck.  Maybe I ought to move to Canada, if that's ever allowed again.  Something to consider.

A view from the bridge

Well, not a bridge, exactly.  The creek goes under the busy street via a culvert.  There are railings along the sides of the sidewalks on both sides of the street, so you don't just fall off and into the water.  They're practical, around here.

I don't know where the creek begins.  But from here, and we're looking downstream at it, from this side of the street, it meanders thru a lot of residential areas, crosses under another busy street, then joins a marsh, which broadens and becomes a bigger creek, until it looks like a river, and actually empties into a tidal river, which is an estuary, if you want to get technical about things. Then the estuary goes into the bay, and the bay connects to the ocean.

This water just happens to take the long way around, to get to the ocean.  If it could hop into a car, it could be at the ocean much quicker.

In a particular place, some distance from this spot, this stream is joined by the other stream, the one that just suddenly appears out of nowhere, that I probably talked about some number of posts prior to this one.  They meet up in the marsh, sort of.

I kind of figured out that the other stream, the one that just suddenly appears out of nowhere, is part of the storm sewer system around here.  So the water that falls from the skies and goes into the sewer grates along the streets ends up becoming a stream, which then joins the bigger creek, and on into the really big water.

It's all connected.  Which is how, when you throw something dirty and polluting into the street, it ends up fouling the ocean. And a lot of territory betwixt and between.

We are all connected.  All of us who inhabit this planet.  Which is why it's so important to look out for one another, and take care of each other.  All of us.