Storm Damage

Looking forward to another night of screeching, 60 mph winds. Luckily, we came through last night with very little damage. We lost a couple panels of fence on the back of our house, but the new side yard fence held up well. The wind "harvested" a few oranges and grapefruit prematurely, and completely thrashed our new lime and lemon trees. The stakes and screening I had put up to protect them were literally snapped in two. At 3 am this morning, I realized that the cars parked out on the curb were probably vulnerable to whatever debris was going to be blown up the street, so guess who (not me) went out to move them up into the driveway. At 7 am, when we got up, there were trash cans rip-roaring up and down the street, so I'm thinking it was probably not a bad idea to move them up closer to the house (especially since one is the brand new car of one of my colleagues who is out of town.) I did NOT want to report on broken windshields and the like. While there was no serious damage on our block, a half mile away, huge trees were uprooted. The photo below (taken on my cell phone) doesn't really show the second car that was crushed by this tree.

This scene (below) is a few blocks further away. The tree survived, but the fruit is just everywhere. I went on campus to get mail and there are downed trees and branches all over the place. Saw lots more damage on the way home--including gorgeous redwoods that are lying flat on the ground, rootballs in the air.