The Greeting Committee

Up early this morning, trying to jolt myself back onto Eastern Time. Unfortunately, I woke up with the same sore throat I went to bed with last night so I think it may be the beginnings of a damned cold. But better now than a week ago.

Did some work in the office then stepped outside for a few minutes to breath the fresh fall air. Still a few hummers around, surely only juveniles at this point. This shot is of a young male - if you go LARGE you can see the first few bright red feathers on his throat. He was feeding on the salvia and kept rising up and hovering, looking straight at me. Seemed like he was welcoming me home.

We've put a call into our insurance company about the trees, but we think that since there was no damage (thankfully) to our house they probably won't cover it. The tree that snapped at the base is probably 80 feet or more in length and the two trees that snapped mid-way up next to the house were almost as tall. It looks like the snapped tops are still attached by some bark to the main trunk, and each appears to be 30 or so feet long. Way more than we can handle with a small chainsaw and a 12 foot ladder! The miracle is that the two trees next to our house didn't detach completely and go right through our roof!! We are SO lucky.

Seems that the storms that hit here were what are called Wet Microbursts - very powerful weather patterns that feature localized columns of sinking air. They cause wind-shear that is responsible for the types of broken trees that we had. It explains why the "super storms" (Irene, Sandy, etc) of the last few years didn't down out trees like this short but powerful storm did. My dad, who spent a number of years in the Weather Bureau, could probably explain this a lot better than I just did!

I am taking myself back to bed for awhile - see if I can sleep off whatever is lodged in my throat/head.

I posted 4 other shots, including a late-season butterfly, two hummers and a blue jay starting HERE on Flickr.

I'll check in later...

Ciao (sniffle, sneeze)
Debbi