About three weeks ago, we had a Santa Ana wind storm here. It was quite unusual. Usually, when the wind howls it goes down the canyons or in the mountains. Very, very rarely, it hits in the city itself. This particular wind storm whacked South Pasadena, Pasadena, San Marino, Temple City, Sierra Madre .... basically all around our neck of the woods. The winds were incredibly loud, so Charlie and I laid in bed and listened to the howling (some of the winds were clocked at 94 mph). We heard a huge thud against the roof and looked outside to see if we could figure out what that was. Sigh... it was a branch of our old 50 foot avocado tree knocking against the garage roof.
A little, loud, later I heard another huge thud and looked outside again. "Charlie", I said, "the tree's gone".
We went outside in the middle of the storm to see what else happened. It was terrifying, branches, leaves, and who-knows-what else blowing past us. We went back inside pretty quickly. The next morning we saw what we thought was one of our orange trees out back on its side. What it was was the top of our neighbor's tree that crashed into our fire pit furniture.
Our neighbor to the south lost a huge branch of a street-side tree that crashed into his front yard. When we were out exploring the yard in the middle of the storm we saw him running about. He had just moved his car from what would have been a parking space under the branch. Whew.
A day or so later, we found a guy (thanks to our neighbor to the south) who took down the avocado remains (I was worried they'd cause more damage) Much to everyone's surprise, despite the branch that hit the garage, another that whacked into our fence, another that crunched into our neighbor's car parked in the back, we had very little damage. I do miss the tree....
The only damage was our neighbor's tree top and our patio furniture.
We lost our electricity for four days. That was awful. Fortunately, my brother (who lives only a couple of blocks away) who lost his electricity too, suggested we get some dry ice for the refrigerator and freezers. Thanks to that we lost very little. On Sunday, Charlie went to a meeting in San Francisco, leaving a dark, cold house behind. I went to a local laundromat. How long can one go without clothes washing? I went home around 11:30 to get a dryer sheet, and noticed odd lighting in the kitchen. I thought it must have been because the tree was missing. ELECTRICITY!! I'll never go into a dark closet again without a bit of joy being able to light it up!
quick update - for the first time in 3 weeks - the local cities are beginning to pick up the piles of branches and leaves in the gutter. Driving around here has been scary. Most streets have at least one lane blocked with branches.
