Texas Gardening: Who got hit with the Storm last night?, 1 by ceejaytown

ceejaytown wrote:
That was one big storm - and weird. In my neighborhood, only my neighbor and I had any damage (she lost a pine tree). No one else had anything - not even a branch in their yard. I lost my Montezuma Cypress (photo). It survived Rita, but had all the needles except the top blown off. And the top 4-5 feet bent over and hung down. We fastened it to a stake from the top to about 6 feet from the ground to straighten it - I referred to it as its corset. The guy wires where it was staked to the ground from about 4 feet up the trunk had snapped, so we redid those too. That left only about a foot that was unsecured, at about the 4-5 foot high level. So guess where it bent? It didn't break, it bent - to the ground. I had an arborist out and he had never seen anything like it. I have a protected inside corner of my house with a port-a-cachere attached. There is about 3 feet between my roof's edge and the edge of the port-a-cachere that is open to the elements. Somehow, it was if the wind blew out from that inside corner - it blew over heavy pots I can't even move, and blew the BBQ grill all the way across the driveway - away from the house and that corner. It's so hard to describe, I'm sorry. In that same area, I have a decorative thingy with a place for a plant bolted to the brick; I stick silk fern into it so that the wrens can nest there and I don't have to water them.:-D That was untouched - the fern hadn't moved. The storm hit two places in my backyard - blew over my salvias and Tx star hibiscus, and then across on the other side of the back yard, blew over a heavy wrought iron large panel that is open - nothing to catch the wind, and smushed my giant ligularia and frydek's alocasia. In between those two spaces all is OK. Lots and lots of debris from trees. I spent the day raking and staking. But my poor cypress is a goner. The arborist that came out said it looked like I had wind shear - downwards. It's the only thing that makes any sense. I was picturing four little tornados doing there thing. And - 4 inches of rain in the rain gauge in the front yard; 1 1/2 inches in the back yard. Go figure.
Here's a picture of my poor tree. It was just beautiful.