[pct-l] Bizarre Moment

[Donna "L-Rod" Saufley]

How strange and how terrifying. Perhaps the ground was saturated (from snow melt) and the wind knocked them down?  I've never heard of health trees simply falling over without some explanation.

Anyone have any idea what the conditions were up there at that time? 

L-Rod

-----Original Message-----
>From: Postholer <public at postholer.com>
>Sent: Jul 22, 2007 4:46 PM
>To: pct-l at backcountry.net
>Subject: [pct-l] Bizarre Moment
>
>Excerpt from Kris & Tom's journal:
>http://postholer.com/journal/viewJournal.php?entry_id=1089
>
>"Around 11am the clouds started to thicken and we heard some low rolling 
>thunder. For awhile, nothing happened. The clouds just got thicker. The rain 
>didn't come. Then, all of a sudden, the thunder was no longer low and 
>rumbling. It was loud and cracking, and we saw lightning. Before the rain 
>came a huge wave of wind swept over the whole valley and the rain followed 
>shortly behind. Tom and I were in a stand of trees, many of which were at 
>least 100 feet tall. I don't know why this happened, if they hadn't had a 
>big storm in awhile, but all of a sudden, trees just started falling down 
>around us. They made a cracking sound much louder and more startling than 
>the lightning, before they fell. We were terrified of getting hit by a 
>falling tree. We looked at each other and both yelled, "Run!" and were 
>safely out of the forest and into a meadow a few hundred feet down the 
>trail. I have never in my life seen anything like that. It was like being in 
>one of the spooky scenes in a Harry Potter movie. The number of trees 
>falling in such a small, dense area was astounding. Weird. Scary. When we 
>got into the clearing, we donned our raingear just as it started to hail. 
>Fortunately, this whole storm lasted only about an hour and the sun came 
>back out shortly thereafter."
>
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