[AT] Scary wind damage.

Indiana Robinson robinson46176 at gmail.com
Fri Mar 13 05:00:14 PDT 2009


In the wee hours of Wednesday morning I was awakened by the sound of
fierce wind and driving rain. We don't usually hear much of those
noises since much of this house is stone and it is big enough that
sound doesn't usually travel well in it. If Diana is in one end of the
house and I in the other neither of us can yell and make ourselves
heard by the other. We seldom hear much noise from outside unless we
have windows open.
This wind was absolutely screaming and roaring like you would expect
from a twister. I don't normally react much to weather except to check
windows and doors. Most storms I just sleep through. I went to the
front of the house to check things and went to the slant wall solar
room to look out. it didn't take me long to back out of there.  :-)
Lots of glass flexing going on.
The barn where the farm shop is sits only about 100 feet from the
house but I could not see it at all. It seemed more like a wave than
rain moving straight sideways. I believe that every window in the
house was shaking. I don't know if the house was shaking or if that
was me.   :-)   I was sleeping pretty soundly when it woke me
suddenly.
I've sat out a lot of storms in my time but this bit was stronger than
anything I had ever seen here. I went to wake Diana up to head to the
basement but by the time I woke her it had settled back to normal
storm levels. Since it was dark and we couldn't see much we went back
to bed. I fully expected to find some serious damage the next morning
but was surprised to see little. There were small branches and twigs
around and we lost one big limb but that was about it. We have had so
much high wind this year about anything lose has already blown down.
Yesterday evening Son Scott and I were driving past our barns down the
road to the west and I spotted what looked like some damage to the big
barn there. We drove in the barnyard at the house and dropped the
tandem trailer and went back to investigate. Sure enough, on one
corner there was some damage to about 6 feet of wall where the shed
roof on that part had lifted slightly and the top of the wall had
moved out about 16". Then I realized that the bottom of the corner
post was sitting about a foot farther north than normal. OK, how did
that post move like that? We started checking the rest of the barn and
got a shock. Much of the east half of that barn had moved at least 8"
to the north... One post in the center of the barn had moved 8" to 10"
north and was barely sitting on the edge of its stone base. Other post
were leaning since their base had not moved but the tops had. Several
beam joints showed movement.
This old barn has been needing some work for some time and is well
over 100 years old but I never worried about its strength before.
These old barns are pretty tough and this one is pretty good sized. It
is at least 36' x 64' with loft in all of it except for one drive
through and one small end section with a shed roof.
We mostly use it for keeping some of our old tractors in and for hay
storage. I was going to move 4 old tractors in there this week but now
I will be moving the three currently in there out until I have it
stabilized. Several of the original mortise & tenon joints show
damage, a couple pretty bad. It has a couple of large openings to the
south and we assume that the wind built enough pressure inside to
partially lift the east end. We believe the west end didn't get
shifted since a large pair of sliding doors in back at that end had
broken loose and swung out at least 6 feet at the bottom and likely
relieved the pressure buildup there.
Something else that I have never seen before was that here were two
flatbed hay wagons parked outside near the barn and as we were looking
around Scott suddenly realized that he had parked his truck where the
wagons had been sitting. The wind had blown those two wagons about 80'
to the north east from where they were parked. One was backed up to
one small grain bin and the other was about 30 feet away backed up
against another small grain bin. I've sure never had that happen
before...
It all seemed to be localized in a small area. Less than 400' to the
south of the house Diana had picked up a batch of dried willow sticks
and piled them up. The wind never moved the first little twig and that
stuff weighs almost nothing.
I guess I will feed the horses this morning and then move the old
tractors to safety and start figuring out where to start on getting
that barn stabilized before the next spring storm.


-- 
"farmer"

"Good clean muck never hurt nobody!!!"
Morris Moulterd


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Francis Robinson
Central Indiana USA
robinson46176 at gmail.com



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