Earlier this week, Central Arkansas had quite a windstorm.
This is our back yard. Fortunately, no house was hit and no serious damage was done.
These images were taken with my cell phone, so the colors are a bit off, but I think you’ll get the idea. 
We got lucky. It could have easily crushed the house.
–James
What is that, a smushed shed? Did the lawn mower survive?
That’s scary thing to wait out. Were you at home?
Emm, you should have been a detective! You’d’ve given old Sherlock a run for his money. 
That is a smushed shed.
The lawn mower may or may not be ok. It doesn’t look damaged, but until they come to take the tree away there isn’t any safe way to get around to it to check it. It’s not an expensive mower…if we lost it, we’ll just be glad nothing worse was lost.
The tree is a pine, guestimated around 70 feet tall. That may be a bit off either direction; I am no expert when it comes to entwork. 
I was indeed working at home the day it happened–how you figured that out I’ll never know. You rock!
Anyhow, the wind was hitting the house so hard all day that the house would feel like it was about to rock off its foundation.
A little into the afternoon, a particularly fierce gust came through and at the same time our power dimmed and I lost connectivity to work.
I called to report the cable outage and, while waiting on them to arrive, figured I’d take a look outside as the wind was dying down a bit, and see what I could see.
At the time, the tree was being held up by the power lines, which were attached to the meter which, all but one bolt, was ripped off of the back of the house.
I called back and the power folks came out and cut the power loose as it was a fire hazard until it was fixed.
Power was restored the next day. Since we rent this house, the landlord paid for the electrician to fix the meter box and bring it up to code.
The good news is we are about to move anyway–we’ve bought a house in Little Rock and actually closed today! 
Now “all” that remains is the always-fun job of moving…
This move gets Shan closer to her job so she doesn’t have to shake loose at 4:30 am every morning any more, and the company I work for has offices in Little Rock and I’ve already arranged to be able to work there after the move.
All in all, it was a pretty hairy time for a tree to fall, but if it had to fall, at least nobody was hurt and no house was hit. The little shed that was munched wasn’t that great of an affair anyway–we didn’t use it for anything except to keep the rain off of our mower.
–James
P.S. (with apologies to Jeff Foxworthy)
If you have green weeds and greenish gunk growing in your yard in the dead of winter with temps dipping down into the teens as often as not…
you might live in Arkansas. 
–James
MERCY! Glad you’re OK.
I look at that once magnificent tree lying dead and sad,
and one thought comes to mind:
Firewood!
Stay warm–
Tom
Woodcarving. WOODEN WHISTLES!
Glad you’re okay James!
A lawn mower? Good grief…you can tell I’m the mother of little children, because I thought it was a tricycle or something, based on the wheels peeping out like that 
I must admit that upon coming to that conclusion, I didn’t investigate further. When you said lawnmower, I had to go back up and look. Sure enough, that’s exactly what it looked like. Good job, emm 
James, I am so glad that you’re alright! We have been getting some pretty wicked winds up our way as well. The bout 2 days ago conveniently froze the pump in my well house, leaving us with no water all day yesterday until I was able to thaw it out with a small heater. The temperatures weren’t all that cold, but with the wind (gusts to about 50 mph), it was down well below zero. But that’s not scary like a huge tree falling. Again, I’m glad you all are ok. Keep safe! I think it’s supposed to get worse out there before it finally gets better. 
I was thinking about your pictures and experiences last night (must have traumatized me!), and how you said “No serious damage.” Around here, a loss of a big tree like that would be tragic!
But still, firewood is good. So are wooden whistles.
Tom
Whats a lawnmower?
…and you can eat it
Yeah, but you can’t have your goat and eat it too.
Tom
ya can if you learn how to make cheese 