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Icy Trees


GFisher

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Was visiting with friends in Austin and Cedar Park during this last storm and it was a real shame to see the all the damage.

CTX weather seems to have become a series of extremes.  Burning hot, dry summers with occasional flooding in between, and then snow/ice in the winter.  The nicer days seem to be becoming fewer and fewer.

Hard pass 

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7 hours ago, mack_turtle said:

One of these tree limbs destroyed my back. Not because it fell on me, but to strained it trying to cut and move a large one that was leaning on my house. Just got back from Airrosti and I feel a bit better.

Hoping to be back to full strength in time for Hill Country Hundy.

Airrosti is awesome

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3 hours ago, Sluggo said:

That’s silly. Texas weather has always been extreme and you’re doing it wrong if you have fewer good days than bad. 

You may have misunderstood 

What I'm saying is the good days are getting fewer,  not that there are fewer good days than bad. As someone who works outside, I can say when we're consistently setting records for heat in the summer, it's far from good in my book. 

 

 

Edited by ATXZJ
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8 hours ago, ATXZJ said:

You may have misunderstood 

What I'm saying is the good days are getting fewer,  not that there are fewer good days than bad. As someone who works outside, I can say when we're consistently setting records for heat in the summer, it's far from good in my book. 

 

 

100+ days in a row of lethal temperatures over 100° every year make this place a hellhole that I would leave in a second if I could. I'm doing my best to enjoy the decent weather when I can, then hibernate in the summertime while you nutters are getting heat stroke.

Edited by mack_turtle
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We have family here so we can't leave now, but we are scoping places because of the weather. As it is we are paying to leave for the entire month of August and it is looking like 6 weeks might even be a better strategy. 

Can't live here in the heat of summer.

TX can't deliver reliable power in the winter. 

And things are getting progressively worse.

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On 2/2/2023 at 2:32 PM, Docscotty said:

image.thumb.jpg.363b44dc520821d4e92278952ed807c6.jpgAbout 5 years ago I built 1.5 miles of hiking trail behind our house on the hillside above Twin Creeks golf course. Great way to chill out after work, stretch the legs, and pick up a ton of expensive golf balls. It took 40-60 hours over several months with loppers and a hand saw to complete. After snowpocalype, it took another 20 hours to reclaim maybe a mile of the original trail.  Can’t even imagine what it looks like today.  Probably time to admit defeat. 

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Docscotty 0

Before Twin Creeks was built, there were some sweet trails back there. Had my best ever yard sale bombing down a hill there.

 

My wife also claims a big ice storm last year. I don't remember that.

 

Had the chainsaw out helping neighbors this weekend. We got lucky at our house.

Edited by Hugh
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A friend put together a 20-mile plus route in Pflugerville linking hike 'n bike paths, starting at the NE Metro Park, by the new skatepark.  We rode it yesterday and that paved path follows Gilliland Creek  -- huge branches were down everywhere - pecans, I think.   We pulled what we could off the path. 

One of the paths is adjacent to backyards; houses are close together.  Two big trees that toppled over together fell across the trail, took down the fence and landed in the narrow space BETWEEN these two houses.  Either tree could have caused major damage if it had fallen a few feet either way.  

Also, there was incredibly heavy fog as we were driving to the start of the ride. Googlemaps took us north on Dessau Rd to a right turn on Pecan St. 

What we didn't realize when we turned right is that we were headed into oncoming traffic because that intersection is now a crossover intersection.  Fortunately there was only one car oncoming and there were two lanes, but WHAT. THE. HECK.

We thought we erred because of the incredibly dense fog, but when going home, we saw someone make the same mistake we did -- in broad daylight,  because there's no warning that the actual right hand turn lane is now in the middle of the damned intersection.  I think this is some variation of a displaced left turn intersection.  

I'm assuming this change was made to handle traffic from the huge Amazon ware house by that intersection. 

 

 

 

 

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20 hours ago, Sluggo said:

Last 100 for 100 was 2011. Not that hard of a work around if you want to get by. 

I'll amend my statement: we have 100+ days of weather that is miserably hot. I do my best to inform the world of this fact in the hope that fewer people will move here. You're welcome.

 https://weatherspark.com/y/8004/Average-Weather-in-Austin-Texas-United-States-Year-Round

Edit: Sorry for all the negative vibes. I hate hot weather and  in 15+ years here, it feels worse every year to me. 

Edited by mack_turtle
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All a matter of perspective. I came from a land where we only had ~140 days of sunshine. On the plus side, there's <7 days of 90°+ riding but 225 days of grey/rain at 45°. At least you can ride in the rain there.

After moving, I spent my first summer hear acclimating as much as possible. Mostly because I was still in PNW mode: "Cram all your fun into the 2.5 months of summer weather" when in reality it should have been "Spend 9 months enjoying most days outside and 3 months of lake/pool/night rides in the summer"

Do I love those 100+ days of  95°-105° riding? No, but also sorta learned to enjoy them. Can I take advantage of those days in addition to the plethora of remaining ridable days, heck yes. 

But also, don't be like me and move here, it sucks, too hot/cold, too right/left, too dry/ humid, too friendly/toxic, too expensive/cheap... choose whatever keeps you out. 😉 

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Mine were a mix. We have a massive pecan tree that took a direct lightning strike 2 years ago, there was literally a spot in the bark where it had been blown off (and there were embers burning when we rushed to the window to see what happened. That tree only dropped one large limb, the rest of them were fine. When I took the chainsaw to the branch to get it out of the back yard, it did not appear to be bad in any way, looked healthy. 

Neither did the live oak branches that dropped on my shack.

I was over at my in-laws who live up the hill from you and all of their branches that I cut seemed to be OK. I did see one or two distressed limbs, but 80-90% of the stuff that I have cut (so far) has been healthy wood. Here is my accumulated pile, just getting started on cutting this up for firewood:

image.thumb.jpeg.b03af771d36f6ad34fa2bfd367d9e840.jpeg

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12 hours ago, AntonioGG said:

For those with lost significant branches, have you taken a close look yet?  Other than the Hackberry, the branches I lost had some rot, or were from a tree that is diseased/stressed.

Mine were 90% "healthy" live oaks. 10% dead from the 2021 Snopocalypse. I say "healthy" because none of our trees weren't under stress from recovery from 2021 and Drought 2022. 

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21 minutes ago, RedRider3141 said:

Mine were 90% "healthy" live oaks. 10% dead from the 2021 Snopocalypse. I say "healthy" because none of our trees weren't under stress from recovery from 2021 and Drought 2022. 

My live oaks are definitely stressed, but it's the not dropping leaves that did them in.   The huge cedar branch was definitely rotting at the y where it broke and some oak branches had burrows at the break.

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