Yesterday Kodiak experienced some serious wind. At the airport for a while there it was blowing a sustained 55 mph with 75 mph gusts. And that's at the airport which is slightly protected from the west wind by the bulk of Old Womens and Barometer mountains. Elsewhere (like in Monashka Bay or in the pass to Antons) I bet it was blowing over 100 mph.
Just after dawn, Nora needed some 'time away from the house' and we went for a drive. It was scary. In places the wind almost blew the truck off of the road. Then on the way home we went down Otmeloi and as I watched 3 huge spruce trees fell over the road right in front of us (if I had not seen them start to go and stopped the truck they would have fallen on us!). Nora did not like this and wanted to go home immediately - smart girl. We turned around and flagged a truck going the other way, we warned them about the trees, and as we watched more trees came down. We might have saved the other truck from getting crushed.
Back home I worried about the trees around our house. I could see the trunks flexing all the way into the ground and the ground around their trunk was even moving. Very scary. Later I drove to a protected lake to go cross country skiing and saw trees down all over town. About 10 trees were blown down by the Baptist Mission - huge root balls up in the air.
Down at the harbor I was impressed with the gusts of wind hitting the breakwater. The wind blown water looked like blowing snow as it curved up and over the breakwater (I have a video I'll try and post later). I tried to take a panoramic that showed the force of the wind, but it fails miserably. It does show how the breakwater protects the boats from the wind, and how all the wind blown salt spray is coating everything with a layer of rime. Today it is much less windy - time to pick up all the wind blown trash about the yard! Patrick
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