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| Starlight, in her pink bunny ear mask, evaluates an uprooted oak. |
Before I got
on the plane in Calgary, to head home after a business trip, my husband told me
I might be driving through tornadoes when I reached New York State. I landed in Hamilton, Ontario, and started driving
toward the US border. When I checked the
weather on my phone, I saw the line of storms heading toward the Twin Tiers.
It was tough to be so far away and watch that
purple dot of a tornado on the weather radar as it headed right toward our
home.
Well,
that tornado did come right by our home, but we were lucky. Nearby, others weren’t. It made a direct hit on Elmira, a city nearby, and did a
lot of damage, but apparently caused no injuries, which is fantastic. And during the ensuing power outage, there
were no reports of looting, which really says a lot about the character of the
people in Elmira.
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| She stepped through these logs like a champion trail horse. |
When I
got home, our hay wagon, filled with 3000 pounds of hay, was in a ditch. It had
rolled over its chock and traveled about 30 yards, pushed by the wind. I’m glad that ditch was there,
because as it picked up steam, the wagon was right on line to go through our
bedroom. And I really didn’t want to have to sleep in the hay wagon.
Our horse
trailer, on the other side of the barn, was untouched, thank goodness. Besides debris ending up in odd places, one
of the only other sign of high winds was that the wood pile I had stacked under
our deck, about seven feet high, had toppled over.
It was more than a topple, actually.
It looked like something powerful had given it a mighty shove, as some
of the pieces were several feet from the original stack.
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| A branch down in the path. |
Today,
Starlight and I rode up on the hill to see what damage the high winds might
have done in the woods.
Starlight has become
one of those great ponies who can sit idle in the pasture for a couple weeks
and go right out on a trail with very little drama. I can’t tell you how much I
appreciate a horse like that!
She did
get a little anxious when we came upon our first major sign of damage – two large oak trees uprooted across the path at the top of
the hill. She knew the trail most
certainly had not looked like that the last time we were there, and horses don’t forget how things look, and notice changes
immediately. But she soon figured out
the 10-foot-high roots were benign, and gamely worked her way over and around
the debris.
I'm afraid I see a chain saw in my husband's immediate future, but overall, we were lucky during this powerful storm.
