September 5, 2011

"We've had blow-downs before, just nothing this size."

One thunderstorm in July felled around 2 million cords of wood in Wisconsin's North Woods.
"If a tornado hits, a tornado is a half-mile to a mile wide and two to three miles long," Ericson said. "Then it lifts and it's done.

"This went on for miles."...

If you cut and stacked the logs on 40-foot logging trailers and included the trucks to haul them, they would stretch 1,700 miles,

15 comments:

AllenS said...

That's just north of me. Maybe I should go on a road trip and check it out.

Megaera said...

That tornado comment -- "it lifts and it's over" -- um, not so's you'd notice, or Baby Brother hasn't been watching much tornado footage lately. The F5 that hit Oklahoma City? Half-mile wide, stayed on the ground for over 50 miles. Think about it.

ndspinelli said...

I got wood reading this.

Wince said...

Yea, but if nobody was in Wisconsin's North Woods at the time to hear it fall...

ndspinelli said...

EDH, Or if a tree fell on Carol "Ditzy" Herman's head as she rode a bike through the forest either w/ or sans helmet, did it make a sound if it kills her. I mean if she was the only person who could have heard the sound, and she is killed, then did it really make a sound. I was riding my bike once and decided to "right" about it. But then some guys jumped out and gave me a shot of thorazine. When I got through the thorazine fog I saw a vision of Justice Prosser fishing and he caught a large fish that looked like Justice Bradley. Then again, maybe that wasn't a shot of thorazine, maybe it was LSD. I wonder if Timothy Lerry ever met Coach Lombardy?

edutcher said...

Looks like the floor after we've dragged the Christmas tree out the front door.

kimsch said...

When my now almost 11-year-old son was 6 months old at Good Friday Weekend 2001, we went to Minneapolis for a weekend trip (unbenownst to us it was also the Final Four weekend in Minneapolis). After Madison, we noted trees down, it seemed everywhere. IIRC there was a pretty bad windstorm that spring.

Unknown said...

I hear the EPA is going to sue God for this.

David said...

Largely a cultivated single species softwood forest, with large stands of one type of wood. I wonder if that makes it more susceptible to wind damage? Northern Wisconsin still has some extensive mixed hardwood forest, where there does not seem to have been as much damage.

There are even a few patches of virgin hardwood forest. That is an amazing sight. If you are near Menominee County, check it out.

Ann Althouse said...

@David The article says:

"The damage is spread across species. The greatest damage occurred to aspen, red and jack pine, and oak, according to the DNR."

Charlie said...

How about the great Peshtigo fire, which occurred at the same time as, and killed more people than, the great Chicago fire. Was that in the same area?

HT said...

Someone told me that the Spring tornadoes that began in Mississippi and moved east up to North Carolina was one tornado, or the same tornado. Not sure if that is true or not. Also that there were tornadoes within tornadoes.

Guildofcannonballs said...

"So the forests across the West are dying, in such large numbers that U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar called it the West’s Hurricane Katrina."

Yeah, sucks.

http://tinyurl.com/3pj8jva


I'm sure anyone around Grand Lake/Winter Park sees this daily. I want to profit from it, taking pine-beetle-killed-wood and also sexy(!) flatstone then creating furniture, but I don't know or understand how to take the dead wood and rock (hardly scarce in CO) and open a (mobile) store that sells dead wood and rock without being thrown in jail to rot while my dog dies.

Wait.

Wait wait wait.

Wait...

Guildofcannonballs said...

Also,

I've skipped reading Carol Herman's comments since Ed wasn't with Hot Air. Years and years ago.

But as I grow older, and having started reading her posts the last month, I respect her as being an Alpha commentator: Carol doesn't give a fuck what you think of her or her posts, and is smart enough to keep plugging away, point by point by point.


I respect J and AP and GM and the others for doing what I don't, which is always repeating the same old BS day in and day out. It wears people down. It causes your enemy (in their eyes) to break down and lose perspective. To lose period.

Carol is like this, but independent, and although I don't agree with many of her points, I understand why she does what she does and applaud her for doing it, abuse and all.

Like Chuck Pelto here:

http://www.amazon.com/review/R26A6ZATOZFLMY

MadisonMan said...

The more famous derecho was on Independence Day in 1999 (link)

The problem with big blow-downs is that you end up with a lot of burnable fuel on the ground if you don't harvest it. Then a couple years later, if there's a drought, conflagration!