Hurricane a'comin (Ian)

Ouch. I should have made clear that I was only referring to live oaks and to a much lesser extent Laurel oaks. Big difference between those. Sounds like you had a similar experience with the live oak actually catching a falling over water oak which tells you how strong they are

 

Laurel Oaks are problematic too. And they are everywhere in Tampa.

 

Back in 1960 (age 7) hurricane Donna blew over a huge live oak at my neighbors farm. The tree had enough roots left in the ground that it lived. Us kids would run up the trunk like a ramp and out into the branches. We used to have horse manure fights. My neighbors had a Shetland pony that dropped racket ball size orbs. Perfect for attacking anyone who tried to get up to you. Damn, what we kids used to do for fun.

 

Yeah I was just looking at that

 

The track will wobble as we go along. Either way, Godspeed southwest Florida.

 

Horse manure fights aka too hot lol

 

It has been moved to noon Sunday.

 

Well that must have been some powerful winds. From everything I've read, and it used to be part of my extra vocational job to be completely conversant in the literature in the area, was that a healthy live oak would never fail in winds where the house itself could stay up.

 

Agreed. Mentioned that in a subsequent post. I should have been more precise at the outset. Although Laurel oaks are not near as bad as Water oaks.

 

thanks for nothing....at least we have been hurricane battered in the past (Irma) so the easy stuff is out of the way

 

During the winter some would still be steaming.

 

we used rotten oranges..not as hard but they probably stunk worse. trick was finding the ones that were hard enough to be able to throw but soft enough to be able to explode on impact..

 

The tree was huge. No houses or buildings were lost in the storm. There were only three homes close by.

 

I've got a semi dead water oak that we had scheduled to be removed next spring when we're doing some landscape work. It's massive and about 15 ft from my house.....

 

Yup. Eggs were also used when we could sneak them out of the hen house. Water balloons too.

 

ouch, sounds like an insurance claim waiting to happen. Hopefully it falls the other way and your house is safe

 

Luckily it's over our dining room mainly, and not near bedrooms. But yeah, we had all our oaks inspected when we bought the house last year and this was the one. Supposedly Jax is gonna he more rain than wind.

I may tie a ratchet or two to it to pull it away from the house if it comes up. Not sure if that's even realistic.

 

Being a dumb kid, we ran outside when Donna's eye passed over thinking all was gone. We soon learned otherwise as sheets of tin started flying down the road at us. Ultimately, slept on a wet mattress looking up at the stars due to missing roof tiles. The ignorance of youth. Could always be worse tho, nobody was hurt.