The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

Anyone have any damage from the storms July 23nd? A neighbors metal shed blew across my yard and into the house next to mine, it was creamed. many trees are down. The Admiral Drive-In lost part of it's screen in the east side theater. It's funny cities have rules and regulations about everything except for trees, people can have a 100 foot tree next to a house with 3,000 pound limbs hanging over a childs bedroom, but if your grass is more than 12" long the city will want it cut. Much of the storm damage can be traced to trees, trees falling on roads trees falling on powerlines. I'd like to see some regulation where trees can't be near a dewlling and can't be taller than 20 feet or so, trees must be kept trimmed back when they grow. I see so many huge trees around Tulsa neighborhoods just waiting for some wind storm or ice storm to bring them down. Tulsa requires permits for everything but trees, the only tree regulation that I know of is dead trees should be cut down.

News reports said Tulsa had hurricane force winds and some gusts could of hit 80mph in Tulsa. I heard that most homes are designed to withstand winds of only about 90mph before they start to fall apart and we came close to that wind speed. We lost power but some homes on my street had power. A neighbor chased after his trash can he found it near the Admiral Therater and he said at the time a movie was playing on the screen as the storm was blowing thru. :-X

Wow.

Derp. Derp. Trees is bad, mKay? Derp....

As the current Vice President of Up with Trees...

Shut up.

Mother nature says "down with trees!"

We are still without power, but the generator was gassed up so all is well.  A house up the street on 84th and Quebec burnt down from lightning, and at 6am as I was on my way to work I had to stop several times to move trees and trash cans out of the way.

So do I

City of Tulsa offering special free greenwaste curbside debris removal operation beginning Monday

http://www.kjrh.com/dpp/news/local_news/city-of-tulsa-offering-special-free-greenwaste-curbside-debris-removal-operation-beginning-monday#ixzz2ZzGWVThQ (http://www.kjrh.com/dpp/news/local_news/city-of-tulsa-offering-special-free-greenwaste-curbside-debris-removal-operation-beginning-monday#ixzz2ZzGWVThQ)

Dewey Bartlett Jr's storm response was just plain awkward. I feel like I was chided for having tree debris.

Here

Dewey Bartlett Jr 's storm response was is just plain awkward.

Fixed that for you.

Crazy Derecho last night. Best we can tell...the 76 mph gust at the Tulsa International Airport is the highest gust reported at that site. The new Tulsa mesonet site had a 71 mph gust...and also had a 91 mph gust reported to us from a home weather station near 37th/Nogales.

The best my Davis weather station got was 26mph, but I live at the bottom of a valley and north winds are blocked pretty well by neighbors 80 foot elm trees.  My brother in BA has a similar station that got a 47mph wind gust.  My station is still running on battery power, but no reporting to the internet for now for obvious reasons.  It can store data however for about 8 days, so I should be able to catch back up once juice gets going again.  I was actually out in it last night at the QT at Pine and Mingo.  Incredible winds.  The rain wasn't real strong, but the wind blew the waste cans QT has in the fuel bays out of the bays and damn near on to Pine.  I sat there for about 15 minutes after putting the new car through the sandblaster coming up Mingo and various debris hitting it before I got into the overhang.  Always happens when I get a new car.  Found a couple of little surface clear coat scuffs..nothing that compound can't fix.

Yes, I'm very OCD when it comes to a new car purchase.  Likely why I got such a good trade in deal on the old car.

I'm quite certain he singled you out.

I might have said something back about checking his pockets for smoke...

Yep you betcha, what goes up must come down. If you don't cut that tree down nature will do it for ya and take out a chunk of your house with it. Trees need to be trimmed and cut back and not left to grow wild and out of control. Have no power in your home today? Thank a tree for falling on the power lines.

I didn't know that "Up with trees" had a management structure. BTW, I couldn't find you at this monthly meeting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G880gxjj9dI

The damage at the 37th & Nogalies area, Garden City, was widespread. Not terrible but everyone got some damage. Telephone poles on buildings, lines down etc.  I saw a metal shed in the boughs of a tree, and a trampoline about 20ft up a tree.

Sauer, even small trees showed damage. I suppose you are against metal buildings and trampolines too.

At some point, someone is going to have to sit me down and explain to me all the nicknames, districts, whatever the heck "Garden City" is, etc. in this area.

Garden City is just to the south of the Holly refinery on the west side of the river. Modest homes that were built for the refinery labor. The land is rich river bottom land and I suppose it is fertile garden land. It is now bordered on the south by a lot of trucking and commercial properties. Only the locals would know.

One area you should know about and avoid is Oakhurst. An area off of Southwest Boulevard just north of I-44 by the QT truck stop near Town West shopping center. It is unincorporated and quite bohemian. Loaded with salvages on one side and chop shops in the bottoms area where people have been known to enter, but never leave. Dogs have become the local security force and it is reputed to shelter many a meth lab. Nonetheless, I know a few decent people who live there and love the "freedom".

I lived there on two different occasions and still have trouble remembering where it is when I see the name.

He should, I'm very wasteful with city funds. I should clock in at city hall and then go work at my real job.

Or we could bury the power lines. You do realize that trees produce oxygen? I don't think you are getting enough of the right gasses wowerkraut.

Yet no power loss at our shop on the south end of Garden City.  Doesn't appear any of the other industries along 41st went dark either.  I'll have to drive around at lunch and see if the trampoline is still in the tree.  That's a neat nature trick!

+1

When we start talking that way, the utility favorite "$1 Million Per Mile" pricetag enters the picture (bolstered by unrealistically adding transmission lines to skew the average):
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/66/Electric_transmission_lines.jpg/250px-Electric_transmission_lines.jpg)
or older, affluent neighborhoods start getting transformers in the middle of their front yards.

Is it time for a trip down memory lane?

http://www.tulsanow.org/forum/index.php?topic=7308.0
http://www.tulsanow.org/forum/index.php?topic=8216.0
http://www.tulsanow.org/forum/index.php?topic=7043.0
http://www.tulsanow.org/forum/index.php?topic=8439.0


From 2007:
Facing an organized "Stop the Box" campaign against plans to bury power lines in people's front yards, officials decided Thursday to not bury the lines at all in Tulsa's historic Maple Ridge neighborhood.
Homeowners had been asking the power company to bury the lines in their back yards, where the above-ground transformer boxes wouldn't be visible from the street. But officials said the idea wasn't possible.
Now the lines won't be buried in front or back, at least for the foreseeable future, said Ed Bettinger, a spokesman for American Electric Power-Public Service Company of Oklahoma.
"We've decided not to go forward with the project at this time," Bettinger said.

Over by the railroad close to the refinery.

I noticed gasl tankers lined up yesterday at the tank farms off 21st and about 52nd west. The power pole serving the area appeared to be down which meant no pumps to fill the tankers.

Trees and Electricity are at odds and there has to be a sollution that doesn't put a transformer by the front door.

(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y35/Ratliff/transformers/eye.jpg)

The latest wind speeds are now reported to be 85mph with gusts approaching 90mph, in the hurricane zone. We finally got our power back on Thursday night around 10:45 pm. The Admiral lost a bit of it's screen on the east side and it's still not fixed. That Admiral screen really took some heavy duty wind loads during that big blow, 85mph winds hitting that large surface area is one heck of a load- makes me wonder if the old screen did not burn down, it may not have survived this 85mph wind.

Trees are fine but not next to a house or where people live, and trees near a home need to be trimmed back and not allowed to grow out of control. Trees belong in parks and a forest not next to a house... Underground power lines have their own set of problems,  and tree roots can damage underground power lines just as they do to water lines and gas lines. There are too many massive trees next to homes and every time a storm hits down they go.. BTW Mary Fallin came to Tulsa Friday to check out the damage and offer state aid to the damaged areas.

I apparently have been giving you far too much credit.

I lost about double the limbs I did with the ice storm. My driveway can park four cars. Right now it is nothing but limbs in a pile about 4 feet high.

Large Burr Oak in backyard - no problem.  Ash tree - same.  Both perfect.

Neighbor's Silver Maple - big limb missed the car by inches...leaves didn't miss.

There are some trees that have no business in the landscape - pretty much any kind of maple, except for Japanese.  Bradford pears.  Arbor Vitae and Juniperus Virginiana (red cedar).

Yep if you would of trimed back those tree limbs before hand, or cut down the trees there would be no problem. The time to be proactive is before a storm hits.

Yeah Grizz, use your tree limb ESP to know which limbs to trim before they fall.

Sauer-donkey' solution is to contribute to planetary desertification.

Seems like a perfectly brain damaged way to go.

Sycamores suck too......!!!

Pretty trees with great shade but I'll have to agree.  Drops limbs like crazy, litters your yard with balls, leaves too large to rake and sheds bark twice a year.  Those should not be in a yard.

"Forecasters also called the event a "derecho," for having at least a 250 mile path with severe damage and pockets of higher end wind damage. It was also called a "bow echo," for having a curved squall line shape. "

They also have surface roots that destroy topsoil and literally eat driveways!

Now they are just making smile up.

They seem to do that a lot with the weather around here.  My family still laughs about the "gustnado" that hit several years back.

Didn't they also create "sneet"?

Oh now its not just a made up term.  :) We get plenty of major straight-line wind damage in eastern OK from bow-echoes/squall lines. The Derecho is a different breed...it has a length component as well. It will have severe wind gusts (58mph) along its length as well as pockets of 75+ mph winds. They get them up in the Uppper Mississippi/Ohio valleys too.

And whoever mentioned how much Sycamores suck...oh yeah. I lived on Trenton off of Cherry street for years. Those trees got smashed by the ice storm and a Father's Day severe thunderstorm...place looked like a war zone.

and snew.

Don't forget snizzle.

My nizzle.

Watch it Paula

Not really.  Derecho has been a weather term for some time.  I just don't think it applies in this case.

Amazing that a pickup truck can hit just one above-ground power pole and knock 4,700 people of the grid:

http://www.fox23.com/news/news/local/power-outage-hits-midtown-tulsa-friday-night/nhrdc/

It cut the truck in half, so this was no flimsy pole.

I'm sure it probably took out phone and cable TV for numerous people as well.

The pole survived, the aerials hung from it apparently were much more vulnerable.