Having a bit of a day :-)

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Having a bit of a day :-)

Post by bladeracer » 29 Oct 2021, 4:46 pm

Having a _very_ windy day here.
Highest I saw on the wind meter while walking the boundaries was 42.7mph, but mostly it's gusting in the 25-35mph area. Difficult to walk into, and the raindrops hit you in the face like hail.

A neighbour has lost his five-bay equipment shed :-(
Tore the footings out of the ground and twisted the 5"-diameter poles into knots, throwing the whole lot over a fence into another paddock. Another neighbour has a large pine dropped across his back boundary fence, and we've got one tree that's flattened the boundary fence at the far end of our house block. The power grid is down (we're off-grid). I walked down to check another neighbour's sheds as they work weekdays, all good there thankfully. She pulled up moments before I got there so I said hello, and she discovered their power was out. I headed back to find the road blocked midway between our driveway and theirs, where she had driven through maybe three minutes earlier, with her children. That's a very close call! SES already cleared a bigger tree that fell this morning sixty meters south of this one, so the quarry trucks could get through. A quarry truck even without a trailer has no hope of turning around here.

When I finally got to my office, my computer was down and is not happy about booting up, so that may be an issue I'll have to sort later :-)

To top it off, both screws fell out of one of the arms of my reading glasses, in my pocket, no sign of the screws of course. Bloody things are so small they should have atomic numbers, in the decimals :-)

I was smart enough to buy a decent spectacle repair kit years ago, but the miracle was that I actually knew where it was :-) So I spent thirty minutes, without glasses, finding the correct invisible screw to fit the invisible holes! Would make a good Taskmaster challange (British TV show pitting inept comedians against simple tasks), except the swearing would make it a silent movie :-)

I hope everybody is doing okay.

Stay safe!
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Re: Having a bit of a day :-)

Post by disco stu » 29 Oct 2021, 5:04 pm

Did you loctite the new screws in, ending up with clumps of loctite all over the lenses because you were doing it without your glasses on.....

It's windy here, but not that windy. Sounds like you're fair copping it
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Re: Having a bit of a day :-)

Post by Die Judicii » 29 Oct 2021, 6:47 pm

Seems like it's the entire East Coast from north to South.
NSW has copped it,,,,,,,,,,
And on the news tonight, a very large machinery shed got smashed at Goondiwindee,,,,, shortly after the farmer had finished
shifting all his machinery into it to get it under cover from the approaching storm.

I'm praying we don't get hit tonite or tomorrow (big storms are forecast) because I've been in the process of replacing timber veranda
and carport poles one by one and replacing with steel.
At the moment I've got the main corner pole of the six car carport that's also attached to the house out completely with acro props under it.
I was worried about up drafts lifting the roof,,,,,,,,, so I've parked a tractor there and holding the roof down with a come-along to the tractor.

I've been laid up,, and can't finish the job.
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Re: Having a bit of a day :-)

Post by deye243 » 29 Oct 2021, 10:48 pm

We had 31mph here when pinging rocks at 665y it was a lot of fun with 12 moa for windage
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Re: Having a bit of a day :-)

Post by wanneroo » 30 Oct 2021, 12:32 am

Not as bad here but we have had a stormy and warm Sept and October with excessive rain, wind, delayed tree foliage turning weeks behind and a big mess from overly saturated soil and run off. The grass keeps growing too. The excessive water caused huge growth in brush and other vegetation but in some places I can't really cut it because the ground is a swamp. We also still have bugs around which is uncommon at this time of year. Typically we get our first hard frost in late Sept but that didn't happen this year.

I got a lot of stuff to do but I might end up having to do it in spring at this point.
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Re: Having a bit of a day :-)

Post by NTSOG » 30 Oct 2021, 5:47 am

G'day,

I spent over three hours cutting numerous fallen limbs and several trees off farm fencing yesterday - last count being 17 - and then doing quick fixes to the fencing so the cattle won't go wandering. I cannot comprehend how much force is required to snap off a large limb - 16" diameter - off a red gum ten feet up. I will have to completely rebuild one short length of fence near the house and I'm sure there will be other trees down on fences that I haven't found yet. I'll probably be cleaning up for most of the summer, then burning off the rubbish after the fire restrictions are over. The saving grace is that I will have enough fire wood for the next few years and most is red gum. Thankfully I bought a 60 ton wood splitter some years ago that makes the job easier. Splitting red gum by hand is beyond me nowadays.

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Re: Having a bit of a day :-)

Post by cz515 » 30 Oct 2021, 7:00 am

Everyone has good and bad days. I had a cold of small branches fall... thankfully not on the overhead lines (they might have touched them) on the road infront a tree branch was resting on the power lines, so we have no power for 12hrs yesterday.

A pine tree branch about 15inch dia fell on one of the driveway. That's a second branch in 2 weeks. Looks like I'll have to cut it down, but the main trunk is wider than a 4wd tyre.

The roofing sheets of one of the sheds blew off, so it wasn't fun trying to patch them back on yesterday. Looks like I have to fight with the insurance on that one.

But no one died or got injured... so it was an awesome day in my book :lol:
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Re: Having a bit of a day :-)

Post by bladeracer » 30 Oct 2021, 1:54 pm

Wow, I thought it was more localised around this area.
We haven't had heaps of rain, so hopefully we won't see flooding again this time.
Another neighbour had their kids' playground area thoroughly trashed, and a very big branch smashed the verandah deck behind the house, incredibly without breaking the house windows.

My computer still isn't happy. If I can work out how to reduce pictures on the phone to be able to post them, I will.

We visited a friend this morning who has had a 60-year-old oak come down beside her house. The root mass is six-metres long, three-metres high, and a meter thick.

I collected my new JW25A this morning, what a little beauty she is :-)
Got home, gave her a quick but very oily massage, grabbed some ammo, and went out into the hail for a quick play :-)

Then the rain backed off so we were able to deal with a year-old calf that has come down very crook. 8-litres of electrolytes into her stomach via a tube perked her up slightly, but we'll see how she's feeling in the morning.

Now we're having a late lunch and I noticed the internet was back up finally :-)

Stay safe out there!
Last edited by bladeracer on 30 Oct 2021, 6:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Having a bit of a day :-)

Post by NTSOG » 30 Oct 2021, 2:54 pm

G'day again,

I've just been for a walk up a lane-way at the back of our property to look for a short in the electric fence. As usual It was a damned 'roo which hooked the off-set hot wire onto a star picket. Walking back down the hill I saw that the western half of a neighbour's hay/machinery shed roof is stripped off completely not far from where quite a few of my redgums came down. It must have been a hell of a gust. There are pieces of tree and trees down all the way into Ballarat too.

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Re: Having a bit of a day :-)

Post by Sarco » 30 Oct 2021, 9:24 pm

Son lost a couple of sheets off his front verandah down at Frankston, fortunately his place is tucked in behind the low dunes on the beach. He also had a branch come off a tree in the rear yard and damage a neighbour's down pipe at the rear of their house. Several others who also back onto Kananook Creek had trees go into the creek and take out fences. A report on the news was say up to 124Kph down there.

Here in central Vic, while we had strong winds all through the night, the worst we had was a couple of dead branches knocked out of old black wattles, and that was about it. Neighbour had an other old black wattle take out a section of his front fence.
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Re: Having a bit of a day :-)

Post by Die Judicii » 30 Oct 2021, 11:25 pm

NTSOG wrote:G'day,

I spent over three hours cutting numerous fallen limbs and several trees off farm fencing yesterday - last count being 17 - and then doing quick fixes to the fencing so the cattle won't go wandering. I cannot comprehend how much force is required to snap off a large limb - 16" diameter - off a red gum ten feet up. I will have to completely rebuild one short length of fence near the house and I'm sure there will be other trees down on fences that I haven't found yet. I'll probably be cleaning up for most of the summer, then burning off the rubbish after the fire restrictions are over. The saving grace is that I will have enough fire wood for the next few years and most is red gum. Thankfully I bought a 60 ton wood splitter some years ago that makes the job easier. Splitting red gum by hand is beyond me nowadays.

Jim


If any of this is a boundary with a road, and said trees are outside the boundary,,,, go straight to your Council.
Several years ago we had one complete such boundary fence virtually wiped out in a storm.
We contacted our insurance company,,, got the fences fixed,, then paid our $600 excess.
Our smarter neighbor just rang the Council and the whole thing was covered by them.
I think that's called "learning by experience"
:mrgreen:
I do not fear death itself... Only its inopportune timing!
I've come to realize that,,,,, the two most loving, loyal, and trustworthy females in my entire life were both canines.
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Re: Having a bit of a day :-)

Post by NTSOG » 31 Oct 2021, 5:53 am

G'day DJ,

Thanks for the information about 'council trees' along road boundary fences. However all the trees that caused damage were on my property. Anyway when we moved to our property there were no trees anywhere so I planted thousands on the property and also deep-ripped along the road side verges and planted thick belts of trees there so any 'council trees' anywhere along my road boundaries are actually ones I planted and have maintained ever since. Our shire council charges rates but otherwise does SFA in our immediate area - I have done far more slashing, pruning of roadside trees, clearing of deadfalls and rubbish along roadsides than council has ever done in the 37 years I have lived here.

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Re: Having a bit of a day :-)

Post by bladeracer » 01 Nov 2021, 7:47 pm

Downloaded an app for re-sizing pics, it seems to work okay, but what a royal pain in the butt :-)
Our neighbour's shed :-(
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Our friend's oak tree :-(
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