[ADXA] Scott's QTH Storm Update

[w5znjoel at gmail.com]

Scott,

 

I am very sorry to hear of your situation but very pleased you are safe and
commercial power has now been restored.

 

Wishing you the best for continued recovery.

 

73 Joel W5ZN

 

 

From: adxa-bounces at mailman.qth.net <adxa-bounces at mailman.qth.net> On Behalf
Of sbranyan at cox.net
Sent: Saturday, June 1, 2024 4:08 PM
To: ADXA <adxa at mailman.qth.net>
Subject: [ADXA] Scott's QTH Storm Update

 

Last Sunday morning around 2:15 a.m. we got hit by one of several tornadoes
that came through Benton County. In our neighborhood, my neighbor lost his
cousin in her eighties after a tree fell on her house. 

 

The storm that got us was south of the major one that came down Walnut
Street in Rogers. It began as straight-line winds around the Harris Baking
Company and as it reached Monte Ne became more cyclonic. Our neighbors
suffered big downed trees on their property with a moderate amount of damage
to structures. A lot of the smaller trees and telephone poles snapped about
10-12 feet up off the ground. SWEPCO is basically having to rebuild the
power grid here-400 poles, 10 miles of line, many transformers, etc. Cleanup
will take a while. Horseshoe Bend campground suffered damage and about a
dozen RVs turned over. The Corps says will be months before it reopens.
Hobbs State Park was also hit hard with downed trees. Most of the damage in
town was on older structures, metal buildings and residential homes hit by
trees. The Susie Q was nearly flattened. A lot of gas station canopies and
pumps were destroyed. 

 

Back during Covid, I had 18 mature oaks and hickories--many 100' or
taller--cut down around the house. This spared us structural damage,
although we lost our oldest tall oak which was uprooted and fell away from
the house and my hexbeam. I have a trail through our 4 wooded acres and
suspect there are other large trees down also. There are a lot of
widow-makers.

 

We have some limited backup power but enough to make the situation OK. We
are on a deep well and our power source is not sufficient to allow us to
pump water, but the neighbors across the street allows us fill as many 5gal
jugs as we desire :-). Four jugs usually get us through the day. I've been
cooking outside with camp gear also, which I've enjoyed. 

 

Thursday afternoon, power crews began working on our neighborhood and we are
hoping to see power on by late tomorrow. But one of the linemen told my
neighbor it would likely be Wednesday. 

 

I lost both wire antenna in the tree damage around our place, but the hex
beam is none the worse for the wear. This afternoon, I finally had the
energy and time to get the radio going this afternoon and made an easy
contact in New England on FT8. The battery power station did great providing
power for laptop, DC power supply, and radio. I hope to catch FT4GL later
tonight when propagation improves. 

 

My hope is ADXA members have not suffered major storm loss this spring. It's
been a bad season!

 

As I finished editing this, power just came on at 2100z!

 

73, and may God bless you and yours,

Scott/W5AAJ

Rogers, AR 

 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/adxa/attachments/20240601/e7745bff/attachment.html>