For the suspected tornado storm of Alton-Wolfeborough, Peak gust at Black Cat was 32 mph from the SE just before it crossed the lake well to the SE. That was the peak gust for the day until later when it shifted to SW and gusted to 44 mph, matching the peak for the month.
Most of the big activity came from a train of storms that moved rapidly on a South to North course from the North Shore of MA to the Conway area. The whole train gradually shifted east, prompting the tornado watch in Maine. The focus of today's freakish activity was from southern NH to the far southeast end of the lake, and then it shifted to the Maine border.
My concern now is that the trees have now had a lot of frequent stress this summer and have not had time to recover. I have noticed a trend in the last three big storm threats:
June 22, 75 mph from the NW- twigs down.
July 2, 60 mph from the S- small branches down.
July 18, 44 mph from the N- large branches down.
It's probably similar to when your muscles are stressed from lifting weights. You get sore because there are little tears in each fiber. You wait to recover them, and they come back stronger. If you don't wait, you injure yourself by making the tears bigger. I would imagine the trees, being living tissue like your muscles, probably function the same way when stressed. And this summer, they're being forced into exercise before they've recovered from the last workout.
I think as this summer goes on, and the severe weather trend continues, we will see trees and branches coming down at lower wind speeds. Also, with the ground now saturated, uprooting is going to become a bigger issue. If what's holding the roots in place turns to mush, it doesn't take much wind to push the whole tree right over. Especially in summertime when leaves act as sails and pine trees have 100% of their needles.
|