Tornado or microburst?
Yesterday, I circumnavigated the 55 almost square acres of Heiser Hollow. I like to walk the bounds every year (at least since the neighbor had the southern property line surveyed), but this summer, I was especially curious about the storm damage, which cut two narrow swathes of trees across the entire width of the property.
The storm damage started on the western edge, parallel to the drive, topping a couple of maple trees, one of which the guys from the power company helped us clear last week. A couple hundred feet further south, 3-4 tall white pines were topped, about 30-40′ in the air. A sort of sickly looking cherry tree was down next to them, not topped, but with the root ball pulled out of the ground.
Several trees came down alongside the road leading down into the valley, and they’ll have to be chainsawed if we want to use the road any time soon. One tree was down in the valley, and then there was no damage for several hundred feet. Along the path we call the Ridge Trail, which parallels the eastern property line, a group of 5 trees were all snapped off at about 40 feet in the air. This is the strangest storm damage I’ve ever seen at the Hollow. It looks like a rotary blade descended from the sky, chopped off some trees, and then retracted.
A couple hundred yards to the north, the damage was very different, but more extensive. Instead of topping the trees, it toppled them. The combination of wet soil and high winds resulted in at least a dozen trees pulling up roots and falling over. Mostly leaving the useless aspen and poplar untouched, the freak wind concentrated on valuable hardwoods
In this picture, Elizabeth is standing next to a 20″ cherry tree which has fallen on the root ball of a 2nd cherry, which itself is lying on top of the roots of a 3rd tree. In addition to the cherries, at least one ash came down, which is especially sad given that ash in other parts of the state are struggling with borer.
There are probably enough timber grade trees down to make it worth having a small lumber operator coming in and harvesting them.
The map below shows a simplified view of the damaged (red) and downed (yellow) trees. It looks very much like two separate wind cells, several hundred feet apart, cut parallel paths. We heard that a funnel cloud was sighted about a mile to the east.
