A quiet year...

It's been a quiet year wind wise... a consistent consideration when one lives on the western slopes of the Green Mountains. With down-sloping winds, winter storms have left a long history of damage. And one is not to forget unlikely, but possible, hurricanes that come up the eastern seaboard. The most damage we have ever gotten in our ownership of Squabetty was the early September 1940 hurricane when the barn roof caved in/flew off. While we doubt that will happen again, we had a good scare just two years ago. 

A good blow - an old time sailor might say. Even though we are far from the coast, I’d say it was much more than that… the national weather service classified them as hurricane winds. And so it was in the wee hours of Wednesday, January 10 (2024) and again in the morning of Saturday, January 13 that winds barreled down the mountain, snapping off trees 30 feet in the air, folding them in half and just plain blowing them over, root ball and all. Huge limbs ripped off.  It was a mess. The rest of the valley suffered as well: roofs ripped from barns, solar trackers blown over, a Corbett Road anemometer, registering a high wind of 99 mph before vanishing into the wind.  But Squabetty and the barn, built in an age when things were made to last, survived unscathed, save for a few shingles off the front of the barn. The airgaps in the house fluttered the plastic covering the dining room shelves, setting off the alarm. I’m sure the house groaned, swayed and creaked mightily. Our anemometer registered winds of 78 mph. The giant larch by the porch, the one we worry most about in high wind events, stood tall against the onslaught. Strong. sturdy. A sentinel. The stories it could tell.