We had a pretty intense and unexpected wind storm on Monday night. Some wind had been predicted by the weather prognosticators, but unless I missed something, the storm was much more violent than what they were saying it would be. I’m pretty sure that I had read winds at about 15 to 20 miles an hour with gusts hitting 40 miles an hour but I suspect it was a lot worse than that. There was also some heavy rain that came at the beginning of the storm but that quickly dissipated leaving only the winds behind.
We both ended up sleeping downstairs because there appeared to be potential for falling trees and at least with the second floor between us and the trees we might have a bit of a buffer. Happily, no trees came down on the house but there was a bit of damage. The ridge cap on the upstairs bedroom was torn off with part of it landing beside the house and the other half landing in front of the house. We had the roof replaced last year and I suspect when the roofers replaced the metal ridge cap they used the wrong type of nails on it. We’ll have to get someone in quickly to get it fixed because it’s on the side of the house facing east and would be an easy ingress for rain. The last thing I want to have to do is repair rain damaged ceilings.
I wish I could fix the ridge cap myself, but I don’t do roofs. I’ve tried. My heart is with it but my brain says “Nay, Nay, Nay.’ Any time I go up on the roof I’m essentially useless. I end up spending most of my time crawling around on my hand and knees expecting that any moment I’ll go over the edge. I’m not sure why that is. I’ve tried to work past the fear but I seem incapable of it. I suspect some fears are just embedded deep in the brain and are not easily overcome.
On the bright side, we had a large branch that had partially broken off one tree a number of years back and had fallen onto another tree. It sat wedged between the two trees appearing like it would fall at any moment but it never did. It made it impossible for me to work in that area of the yard because I figured it would end up falling at the worst possible moment and my obituary would read that ‘he was killed by a falling tree branch.’ I’d like to die in a more dignified way than that (or even better, not at all). But now it’s gone. Another victim of the storm. Time to get out the chain saw.
