An Ill Wind Shear

"But it's an ill wind that blaws nobody gude."

—Sir Walter Scott, Rob Roy

An ill wind indeed stuck the northeastern part on Union Hall on Sunday night, and indeed it blew ill. A rainbow in the evening hinted that the storms were ending.

But Sunday night brought high winds to a narrow strip of the county. The wind shear did considerable damage to trees and a few buildings. A neighbor to our farm in the area called early Monday to tell us what happened. He'd lost a bunch of trees as well as half the roof off a barn his grandfather had built in the late 1800s.

By the time wew went out to look, VDOT crews were cleaning up.

As we neared our farm, we saw this:

And then one of our trees—a big red oak that must be a hundred years old.

We had some smaller trees damaged, too. Plus some of our hay was flattened (it'll spring back) and the roof was blown off an ancient chicken house. The following pictures are on our neighbor's side of the road.

More scenes of the clean-up:

On Monday afternoon, another unusual event happened in Union Hall—a boat ran aground on Rt. 40.

OK—what really happened is that a big truck hauling a big boat on a low flatbed tried to turn onto Kemp Ford Road and didn't quite make it.

The turn is kind of tight and vehicles have to go over a hump. The trailer caught on the hump and wasn't going anywhere. An unmarked police car soon arrived (see the blue light?). At that point we left, so I don't know how they got the boat unstuck. 

I wonder if it got stuck again on some of the narrow roads to the numerous coves at the lake. I wonder if it encountered any downed trees. . . .

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