Mystery of Toppled Trees

I came across an interesting video of a recent phenomenon that happened in Washington State in Jan 2018.

An odd event where 100's of trees were snapped in a forest all at once in a few seconds time. The officials say it was likely a Mountain Wave. I've never heard of this type of weather phenomenon prior to today so it was pretty interesting to learn about. It appears to have a similar strength to an Earthquake/Toranado/Hurricane type event. I do find it odd that in all my years... I've never heard of this type of weather occurrence happening before.

Is there anyone here knowledgeable in this type of weather event that can shed some light on the event and corroborate whether or not this scenario could happen from a mountain wind ?

Does anyone have any credible stories to share of something similar to this event happening before that they know about ?
The video touches on a couple similar instances we have recorded historically... but I'm just perplexed now to find more.

I sure wouldn't wanna be caught in a forest when this type of event takes place... for the trees to all fall at precisely the exact same time... its just eerie.




Over 100 Downed Trees

leolady

Sounds like a microburst.

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a reply to: DAVID64

So weird was just reading through the vela incident thread and saw this, lol just saw the vid you posted, I was thinking more of a meteor but that vid is pretty intense!

originally posted by: DAVID64
Sounds like a microburst.

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That is what I was going to say....I lived in Rockford IL and back in 2002ish, there was a micro burst, and 100s of trees were downed in less than 10 minutes, it took weeks to clean up.

If if can do that to trees.....what on earth would it do to a soft squishy human body? ugh

a reply to: leolady

Trolls?

a reply to: leolady

“Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.”

Sherlock Holmes


Meteorological Moriarty indeed...

a reply to: PhyllidaDavenport

.....wait for it.....

a reply to: leolady

Its also called a 'windthrow' or 'blowdown' . Storm rains soak the ground, weakening the roots hold, then high winds accompanying the storm hit a stand of trees, blowing down a few and creating a domino effect to other trees next to it.

Whole swaths of trees can be 'blown down' this way.

Loggers love this, instant harvest in an otherwise protected forest.

wiki

Definitely looks like rain and wind related. A meteor would have been seen by people and would have left a particular butterfly pattern. The trees get waterlogged and heavy with rain/sleet, and the wind blows them down.

a reply to: DAVID64

In my part of the world we simply call the gusts but the process is the same-a cyclonic storm of some type and then whoosh.

The trees all fell towards a lake, which is rather likely to be downhill from said trees.

Some sort of atmospheric event - a heat burst comes to mind as something that can do this rapidly but also reduce air pressure - in conjunction with water weakening the grip of the trees on the soil and gravity giving a little extra oomph seems likely.

a reply to: leolady

Thank you for the thread. I really dont know what caused it though. A good ats mystery.

i'm with the microburst answer...

when I was in phoenix doing property damage repairs to the inventory of homes held by medium sized Real Estate Management companies... we had several spates of microbursts which De-Roofed houses on one side of the street yet left the houses on the other side-of-the-street just peaceful & pleasant

Micro bursts push upper level air downward at +200-to-300 MPH and the result might be mistaken for a tornado

but the sledge-hammer impact of the pile-driving force of super cool column of air is downward instead of lateral like a tornado funnel

one minute the day is normal ... in seconds it's like Thor's Hammer smote the mini area with dark & super cold air burst and a minute later the Sun's back & only the destruction remains to baffle the casual drive-by apartment hunter / rental hunter trying to visit a promising property (that is no longer in habitable shape)

This happened in NH and Maine back in December and has happened before.ken off a reply to: leolady

a reply to: Kandinsky

LOL...

your killing me... ROFL

I'm not really very clear on what you must be implying here...

Tree Trolls ? Or Thread Trolls ?

leolady

There is a video on this attached article which shows a bunch of trees all falling at about the same time which might be similar to what happened in the Washington State thingy.

A car narrowly escapes. Not sure what caused it in this video ? But it doesn't look windy to me ?


Trees fall down on road

leolady

Microburst or still a mystery?

The explanation espoused by The Daily World was that the wind came from a "microburst," a rare wind event that creates a downward wind in a localized area.

But a National Weather Service meteorologist told Mass it would've taken winds of 70 to 80 mph to snap trees off in the way it happened that night, so Mass dismissed that possibility.

Source

Here is another you tube video someone has put together on the Tree Topple Event.




I did some reading up this morning on the microburst phenomenon. It is when the air moves downward in a forceful motion and when it hits the ground level it spreads out.

I don't think we have an aerial view of the toppled trees to see what the fingerprint looks like after the event. It would be good to see an image. I wonder if this can be obtained from one of those google map thingies... I believe that what we have seen in the videos simply shows topographical maps of the area in question, but not real aerial views of the area.
I've been playing around with the google maps feature but not very good at it.

This is a pic from wikipedia showing a representation of a microburst



leolady

According to the video it wasn't even very windy that day....but there was a sudden and intense drop in pressure at one point.

The other thing that would speak against it being a micro burst was the fact that the trees all fell in the same direction...instead of outward from a central point