Revised 2-19-07

SNOW DAMAGE

Snowfall of March 10, 2006

Several inches of wet, heavy snow fell March 10–11, causing major tree damage in our park. Although there was some property damage, it was amazingly minimal considering the number of trees and branches that came down. If you weren't here to see it, you wouldn't believe how the park looks—like a war zone—which is why I'm posting the proof online!

Live Oaks accounted for the majority of the damage, which makes sense because they have leaves to catch more snow. The same happened to Manzanitas. Sadly, many of these split at the base. I saw only one major Digger Pine branch and one Blue Oak branch that had fallen, but of course there may have been more.

By the time I took the March 14 photos, Earl Davis and a large crew had cleared all the roads, and were busy chainsawing and chipping. Today, Tuesday, March 14, it's raining (with more bad weather to come later in the week), which doesn't make it easy on these hard-working men.

To add insult to injury, after the snowfall we were without power for 16 hours. Our phone backup system worked, but only for several hours, and therefore we had no phones. Gene Langworthy told me he was going to get the backup generator going, and I guess that happened, because we had in-park service later. Of course, we also lost cable TV (someone sneezes and we lose that), and service didn't return until Sunday morning. Although many hours late, the Fresno Bee guy managed to deliver our newspapers on Saturday morning. With trees across many of our roads, it was a heroic effort.

I began photographing damage in the 200s, then 300s, 100s, 400s, and 500s, and hoped to divide the photos into these sections. It proved too difficult, so they are simply presented in the order I took them. Even at small sizes and resolutions, the photos cause a significant load time for folks on dial-up, so I've divided the approximately 275 photos into 9 web pages. Patience is still required!

Follow the links at the bottom of each page of photos to go from one to another. To view the page full screen, hit F11 (F11 is a toggle; hit it again to return to normal view).

Photos taken March 11, 2006

Photos taken March 13, 2006