And Then, the Wind Came

I was so excited to have the Magical Potting Shed done enough to start decorating, and playing in. And then, we had a "wind event". Wind isn't new to our area, we get our share. Sustained, high winds, though, that's out of the norm. The wind was a sustained 25-35 mph, with gusts double that.

We live north of Greeley, out on the plains.
I'm fairly certain that our gusts were stronger.

Unfortunately, I did have to leave the house on Friday (dang it!). I really didn't want to, because it was so gross out, but I had a private lesson to teach and money overrides my displeasure over wind. When I pulled into the driveway, I was dismayed to see part of Maggie's roof flapping in the wind.

I took video, but for some reason can't get it to upload. I wasn't going to mess with the metal panels while the wind was whipping, and decided I'd deal with it once everything calmed down.

Mom came over on Sunday, which was still kind of cold and breezy. I had no desire to go look at the destruction of the roof, so I told her, "as long as it doesn't snow Maggie will be fine until tomorrow, when it's supposed to warm up." 

That seemed like a safe thing to say, since we haven't had any snow since December 20, and that was a joke. It barely counted as snow. Prior to that, our last snow was December 3. So what if my weather app was calling for snow? Weather apps are always wrong, and we've been unbelievably dry.

I woke up to this ...

It would figure that the one time I'm counting on the weather app to be wrong, it got it right. Well, a broken clock is right twice a day, as they say.

Luckily, it was just a dusting, and by the time Mom came over to help with the roof, the sun was out and most of the snow had melted. We bundled up and headed out. I thought it was going to take both of us to wrestle the panels back to where they belong.

I climbed up onto the potting bench, lifted the tin panel, and the poly one slid right back into place. It is cracked a bit, but the crack is well under the tin panel. It took a whopping two seconds to fix. I should have done it on Sunday.

I thought I had anchored the panels to the cross beam, but obviously hadn't. When I took the time to think about it, I realized that I'd placed it on my "to-do" list and forgotten about it. When we first placed the panels, the metal ones had such a huge overhang that we couldn't reach the cross beam until they got trimmed down. When Chief did trim the panels down, I plain forgot about climbing back up there to secure them.

With the cold and snow still being on the roof, I again chose not to drag the ladder out to fight with securing the panel to the cross beam, and suspect I might regret it in the future. My plan was to do it this weekend, but we've got some really cold temps coming. After all of this unseasonably warm weather this winter, now it gets too cold to work outside.