Blowing and Rocking Up A Storm

Ripley’s Believe It Or Not calls The Blowing Rock the only place in the world where it snows upside down. We don’t know about that, but it might be one of the few places in the world where it rains chairs, garbage cans, benches, tents, small garages, trees and rocks.
“It’s just dangerous walking, much less riding around in your car,” said Ivy Roaker of Atlanta who stayed over a couple of days after this weekend’s wine festival. “I’ve never seen, or heard, winds like this, and I used to live in Chicago.”
Roaker echoed the thoughts of not only visitors, but long time residents who found difficulty in recalling a time when the winds blew so hard for such a long time. “We’ve had high winds during ice storms and lost a lot of trees and limbs, but never can I remember entire days of high winds,” said one local motel owner. “It’s just made a mess of things.”
While it did leave a mess around the village in the form of fallen trees and limbs, it seems, for the most part, no serious injuries or significant loss of property was experienced in the village. However there were some narrow misses.
A number of trees and large limbs came crashing down from the winds gusting as high as 70 mph. In at least two cases trees fell across home, the largest one in Mayview Park where a large tree fell across the roof of a cliffside house near Pinnacle. On Morningside Drive a tree fell across the corner of a house ripping a section of the roof off as well as siding on the house.
A large tent hosting an event for the wine festival fell victim to the high winds, destroying a large collection of wine, glasses and other items and doing major damages to the tent itself. Volunteers worked late into the night to bring in another ten and set up for events scheduled for Saturday morning.
A number of fallen trees blocked streets around town, with the town’s public works and emergency services used to reopen Morningside, Green Hill, Opossum Hollow and several other roads and streets.
Signs of the high winds were visible all over the town, especially along Sunset Drive early Monday morning. Plastic chairs, garbage cans, limbs, and other debris could be seen along the roadway and in yards.
In one section of Highway 221 a small garage blew from its foundation and into an adjoining building, and at three other spots near the village out building were blown over or damaged.
Some trees did fall across power line, disrupting service in Mayview Park, Green Hill and in the Morningside Drive neighborhood. Power went out all across town during the early morning Tuesday, however in most of the downtown area it came back on after a few hours. Blue Ridge Electric was on the scene early both Monday and Tuesday working on restoring power. All across town the sound of chain saws echoed.
The highest winds happened Thursday night and early Friday morning, and returned with the same veracity on Sunday night, and all day Monday and Tuesday.