Mama Kat Thursday: After the Storm

The center of Hurricane Michael came ashore 100 miles east of where we live. The west side of a hurricane is the best side to be on: less rain and a bit less tumult.

We watched TV all day. The near-by Air Force Base sequestered all their Airmen to the base and generally closed down except for essential operations.  As did the whole town.

A patter of steady rain started fairly early in the morning, then was mostly windy with strong gusts from 9 am to 2 pm, then done. I think I heard a pine cone hit the roof with a loud "whack" 4 or 5 times.

Where we live, that was it.

Here's some post-storm shots from around my yard:

There's mostly just a heavy scattering of small pine branches, pine needles, bay tree leaves and pine cones in the back yard. That's actually typical of just about any thunderstorm that passes through.

The strong gusts of a tropical storm, however, usually reek havoc with my Pampas grass fronds:

I'll have to trim all those off these week.

This was the largest pine branch I saw around the yard:
It's between my and my neighbors house. It's a fresh branch, torn off by the wind.

Mostly, I just have a clutter of small branches, needles and leaves on the ground such as this:

It's really just my back yard that looks littered like this. The front yard is pretty clean, but that's because most of the trees are in back and my adjacent neighbor has a yard full of pine trees.

Pine trees are relatively "junky" trees in the sense they have lots of dead branches that any rain storm with a bit of wind knocks off.