Piles of Wood Chips Are Like Ant Hills

After some headway to remove all the down branches and massive hundred-year old oaks and cottonwoods that were felled by the storm on June 9th, the landscape is now more open and forever changed. What is the noticeable difference at first is the mounds of wood chips left from branches and limbs and broken branches that were left handing from some of the trees up top. That twisting where trunks were splintered and broken off completely started at about 30 feet. Never-the-less, the parks and recreation crew have done an amazing job with clean up and the park is beginning to return to normal less about 60 big majestic trees that are still around in sawdust and wood chips. Life goes on!

The National Weather Service did investigate a possible fourth location to determine if there was only straight line winds or a tornado that caused damage. And---the results were determined that indeed, a fourth tornado had touched down. Of course the difference between a funnel cloud and a tornado is  the point at which that funnel cloud in the air does, in fact, touch ground, thus making it a tornado and no longer just a funnel cloud.

And---as I still say from compass headings of tree stumps ranging from 060 to 330 degrees at the park, that a EF0 tornado could have caused some of the damage in the Old Lake Highlands, Casa Linda and Lakewood areas. I am not a weatherman, nor do I hold out to be one, but I have been raised to watch, observe and learn what weather can teach you. I would hate to tell you how many times growing up when I was pulled out of bed during the night and loaded into the car as we raced five miles to my grandfathers farm where he had a massive storm cellar. Mom was afraid of storms having lived through a couple of tornadoes herself.

I was away at college the last time she narrowly missed a Palm Sunday tornado when we lived in the  Great Lakes area. That tornado missed our house by a margin of two city blocks. Later, the duplex I lived out of school had been on that same path of the storm, I could still find shards of glass and tile stuck in some of the rafters of that house's attic 5 years later. That duplex was only a mile from mom and dad's house that was missed in that Palm Sunday tornado.  By-the-way, that same storm did hit the house of our local CBS-TV weatherman who lived on the street two blocks from mom and dad's.

The point is---you learn about weather. It can save your life. You never take weather for granted.

Swallowtail Butterfly on Dill

Beauty on the wing

Great White Egret Fishing in a Reed Bed

This Sunday Was Repeat Of Last Sunday

Right down to another crane incident to wind damage and three tornadoes confirmed in the Metroplex, Oncor was back in the "restoring power to 30,000 customers business". One thing that I have noticed this year is that weather seems to be in a cycle of short waves right down to the day each week. There was also flooding and some of that flooding blocked removal of the down trees from last week. The good side of this if there can be a good side, is that the flooding wasn't as bad as last week and the damage was not good, but it was not as concentrated as last weeks, either.

The down is from the storm last Sunday. The water is from the storms of this Sunday.

The new Ranger Baseball Stadium, the one with the open/close roof, is in place as far as the main steel work structure for that movable roof. Two miles to the right of this image there was a tornado that hit Arlington yesterday, Sunday. 

 

This wild turkey, who seemed pretty domesticated for a wild turkey,  came out of a wooded area along a roadway. As I passed I could not believe what I was seeing so I turned around and came back. He was even more close to the roadway now than when I first had seen him. I love to find these off-the-wall things like this. I see a lot of stuff like this.

Here It Is The End Of The First Week Since Devistation Struck

and while signs of progress have been made and are still being made, what stuck me was the  now browning of leaves and small branches by the hundreds of thousands still every where in sight. The staging area at Lake Highlands High School has returned to normal with so signs of all the stacks of utility poles, flat bed trailers of transformers, pallets of wire, dumpsters marked scrap metal while others were marked trash.The mobile command center Oncor set up is gone now, as are all the trucks loaded with utility workers from 11 states that came to help. Parks and Recreation Crews are still cleaning up the trees that were lost to the storm. The gaping holes in the canopies where hundred year old trees stood only a week ago are more than just noticeable, they are painful memories of what once filled those vacant openings. As of Friday, the total count of felled trees stood at 62. Damage to tops and upper limbs run well into multiple hundreds. In the deep woods of White Rock Creek  to the west of Goforth going north to the curve of the northeast service center where are near a dozen more that were not counted, although three at Flag Pole Hill were included.

Landscape crews, both park and recreation and private landscape companies will be cleaning up for not weeks but months to come. My interest has begun to shift to the summer rains and what will flow into the lake yet to come. There will be problems on to that end I am almost sure.

Flag Pole Hill

Yesterday, I got my first look at the crane that collapsed onto the Elan on Live Oak Street. It is being reported that the crane will remain where it is for at least another week. The ones that were displaced and put in hotels by the owner of the Elan City Lights Apartments, Greystar

Flag Pole Hill Across street from first image.

Crane that fell during storm on Sunday,June 9th and took a life of a resident. It will remain here for at least another week. 

Greystar, ended their paying of hotel bills yesterday. Later next week, it is being reported that the cars in the multi-level parking garage will start to be lifted out from the top down beginning sometime during the coming week.

Third Set of Images from Storms

Electric Contractors from Alabama Help Oncor with power restoration.

More out-of-town contractors assist Oncor with getting the power back on.

Two more big trees lost that I missed totally. Also,found 4 more in areas that are able to be seen but cannot get close because they are on private property on the back side of homes. And, in the dense forest along White Rock Creek there are those four. That brings the total to over 50 trees down with

The number of out-of-town utility contractors are seen staged everywhere. Today, I was only mile from home when I ran across a group of guys from Sumter,South Carolina. The guys that I talked to work for the South Carolina  contractor but they were from Alabama. Alabama Power has many crews here and the 350,000 without power is now down to less than 20,000.

The park crews are making their mark on the cleanup, too. It is amazing what these guys do for the park. This year, thus far, they have had three flood clean ups on the shoreline and trails, put the carnage from this storm. For one, I know that I appreciate what they do for the park and they like for people to tell them how much they are appreciated as well as any one does. I thanked three guys today for their work.

Second group of images from Storm Damage

A Thank You Picture to these Pearl River guys from B&B in Brandon, Mississippi

Electrical Transformers Await Installation at staging area in the parking lot at Lake Highlands High School.

More supplies with another out-of-state utilities that came to help Oncor.

Two Years Ago When A Storm Blew Trough---

24 majestic and old-growth trees that had stood watch over White Rock Lake for more than 100-years

More Homes Had Trees On Them and I'm not talking about one or two

were lost to the storm and even today, they are missed  where they once stood watch.

Sunday, a powerful outflow boundary came racing across the metroplex ahead of a cold front that meet up with high humidity and dew points that had pushed the temperatures into the 90s.F. As the winds came some were recorded officially at 63 MPH, but in some places, those winds were more strong than the 63 MPH. When the winds moved past the Metroplex, the carnage of its rage was a
complete devastation.

Monday stated out with over 300,000 customers of Oncor, the delivery system for the electric utility parent, TXU Energy, without power. Quickly, the news reports came in that the storm had claimed one life when a Tower construction crane fell into a new occupied apartment building rendering the building unsafe to live in and residents were evacuated. Now, in the third day following the storm, the damage at first hand makes the storm of two years ago seem like nothing at all.

My first look at the damage left me speechless. I could not find words that could relay what I was feeling into words.  The sight of what I had seem had to be absorbed, whole streets reduced to pathways. I have a love for the lake that goes back many years. The giants of the forest have long held me captive and I am not what some would call a "tree hugger". Far from it, indeed.

While I had survived the initial power outage, my power went out abruptly last night just as I was set to listen to the symphony. It had been a long and stressful day and I wanted to relax. That, didn't happen. About 1:30 a.m. this morning, without lights, air conditioning, not even a fan, I slept until 4:30 a.m.when I  got up, dressed and headed for the car. The park portion of the lake opens at 5 a.m. and having stopped at McDonald's for coffee and some breakfast food,  I started the first trip around the lake when  I didn't have to worry about traffic and started  the first stage of an in depth look at the damage of the big majestic that were laid out broken with me hurting at the loss.

Two years ago, I had counted and recounted the loss in the big majestic. That count was at 24. Already this morning it was at 32 with more to come. I headed toward home arriving home just 15 minutes after my power had been restored.  I went to bed and slept a solid 4 hours. Once again, I dressed, packed my camera case and snack tote and headed out to find the caravan of linemen that were arriving in Dallas to help Oncor restore power.

There were crews from Texarkana, TX., Brandon, Mississippi, one group from Alabama and several other smaller utility contractors.The crews were bringing back the power as they worked.  Other crews were sawing the big massive trunks into pieces that were being loaded onto tucks. The Oncor staging area in the parking lot below the towering press box of Lake Highlands High School where it was like a military precision run operation. During the afternoon search for trees that I had missed, turned up more than I had expected making this storm, the worse that I have seen in the past 20 years at the lake. I have 331 images from the first round and 53 more on the second run. These images were only of trees that showed that recognizable tell-tail sign of bright new wood showing, full trees uprooted, old growth that had stripped half the trunk size into two pieces, trees that fell on houses, cars, buildings such as the boat house or office building along a major roadway that surrounds the lake borders.

Since I can only display three images in each post, it would be nearly impossible to show all the images. Some are professional quality while others are for archival record which means that they are

Dreyfuss  Club Picnic Area

The Boat House at White Rock Lake, c.1930s and a Giant cottonwood 

excellent at a smaller size but will not blow up beyond 50 percent. So, I will start with the three most powerful images and then do a couple more post.

There are trees that I miss not being there like we miss loved ones in our lives that are now gone so this really is a spiritual exercise for me. I had a longtime LH resident tell me today, "Thanks for what you are doing". That is what drives me more than anything. It meant something to her and that is good enough for me.



Corrections on 6/12/19 to omitted text because of previous updates prior to publishing.

Mother Nature Still In Control

A high meadow planted in wildflowers that have bloomed for a couple of weeks now, had another surprise as these peony poppy like plants have come up through the bed of prairie grasses that were cut in the fall and were bedded down over winter after being  sown with wildflowers.

The point is this: one must visit the meadow three or four times a week as plants come up almost over night with the warming temperatures and the large amount of rain that we have had this year already. The flowers are stunning and coming into the last phase of such beauty.The view changes as more species come up and bloom.

For a better look at the beauty, you can click on the image and it will open up at a higher percentage for viewing. See the total beauty of these wildflowers that nature held back until the very end of her spring run.