The past storm

I was a little surprised none of my fellow California list members
have brought this up.  Anyway, for the rest of you who didn't know, we
recently went through a rather powerful storm here in North and
Central California last Friday. Our local weatherman here in Monterey
says it probably was the strongest since the 1950's. We had some very
high winds with this storm, reaching gusts near or above hurricane
speed. Some of the mountain tops saw winds in excess of 100 miles per
hour. The rain was torrential, and a couple of sites saw rain in
excess of 9 - 10 inches. Fortunately we hadn't had a lot of rain
previously so it was able to soak in, rather than causing floods as in
1995 (which cut those of us living between the Carmel and Salinas
rivers off from the rest of the area). There were many, many downed
trees in this storm. My city fared well, we don't have lots of tall
trees, but cities like Monterey and Carmel have had power out since
the storm on Friday. The waves were strong enough to move very heavy
granite boulders around on the beach, and Pacific Grove (next to
Monterey) shut down the entire coastal road.

Here are a few links to tree damage from the storm on the campus of
California State University Monterey Bay:

- http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2185/2166919419_524dc398d3_o.jpg

These Eucalypts have had poor luck. Each big storm knocks of yet more
branches. As you can see, one has lost almost its entire crown.

- http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2155/2166920833_cf1b3b6654_o.jpg

A poorly maintained (in my opinion) Cupressus macrocarpa lost half of
its crown. It actually had been far more branchy and had lots more
vertical branches.

- http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2105/2166917971_cd0b4af381_o.jpg

Pardon the weeds, but the most damage I had in my garden was my Ray
Hartman Ceanothus got blown to a 45 degree angle. I'm not too happy
about that, and this means I'll probably have to use a brace to keep
it upright for the rest of its life. My house is in a bit of a bowl,
so I think we were spared most of the strongest winds, although around
town there wasn't a lot of tree damage, surprisingly.

That's about it. There was a lot more impressive damage up in the
mountains, but I have no photos of that. What did other Californians
who went through this storm experience?

Barry Garcia
7 miles north of Monterey, CA
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