How Windy Was It?
LeAnn posted this blog on Wednesday, October 27th, 2010 at 11:48 pm
Surprisingly enough, for the strength of the wind Tuesday night, gusting to 60 mph, there was relatively little damage.
I did, however, have to keep dodging small tree branches in the road as I drove out to the main highway Wednesday morning to get to town. Nothing big — but lots of debris in the road from the trees.
It wasn’t until I was changing out Isabelle’s water bucket to get fresh water for her Wednesday evening that I realized just how windy it had been. At that point it was still windy, maybe in the 25 to 35 mph range, but not 60 mph.
Isabelle’s shelter is an old turkey shelter from a turkey farm nearby that we have converted into a a shelter for the horse. We put sides on it and opened up one section so she can go inside. The shelter sits on — well, they’re either four-by-fours or six-by-sixes. We put the bottom beams up on blocks so the shelter is high enough for Isabelle to get into without worrying about hitting her head or feeling claustrophobic.
Anyway, while I was untying Isabelle’s bucket, it came to my attention that something was wrong. I always tie horse buckets to a fence post or some other handy structure to keep the horses from tipping over their buckets of water.
For some reason, I couldn’t get one end loose. I tie Isabelle’s bucket to the shelter, and the other end of the orange braided twine string just was not going to come loose.
I looked down and could hardly believe my eyes. One end of the braided rope was *underneath* the bottom beam, between the beam and the block of wood on which it rests.
“How did that get there?” I asked, giving it a sharp tug.
The braided twine was *not* coming loose.
I thought about it for a bit. And the only explanation I could come up with is — the wind was rocking Isabelle’s shelter up off the blocks, and then the twine got wedged under there when the shelter was off the beams and stayed there when the shelter settled back down.
When we put up the shelter for Isabelle we spent a long time securing it. We dug in fence posts and then nailed and tied the shelter to the fence posts so it would stay where it belonged. Good thing, too, because Isabelle has decided the corner of the shelter is a dandy place to scratch her tail.
We’ve had windstorms before, but to my knowledge, nothing strong enough to rock Isabelle’s shelter on its foundation.
I heard on the news that the barometric was low enough at times so that it was as low as Category 3 hurricane. No wonder it was so windy. . .
LeAnn R. Ralph
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