Saturday night’s storm brought down 13 trees and left the campus “covered in green litter,” grounds superintendent Cary Avery said.
But you won’t see much of that litter today (March 21). Avery and arborists John McKnight and Melissa Boelman came in at 6 a.m. Sunday to start cleaning things up, and groundskeepers got busy with their regular shifts at 5 a.m. today.
The crew had the roads and bike paths pretty much cleared by 8:30 a.m.
Avery blamed the saturated soil for most of the downed trees — they simply uprooted.
Large limbs broke off or separated from tree trunks, including two pines in the Tercero housing area. Limbs from one of those trees hit the roof of one of the older Tercero residence halls, while another limb crashed onto a bicycle parking area behind the Tercero Dining Commons.
The residence hall sustained minor damage, but a couple of bikes did not fare so well. One of them ended up with a front wheel twisted into a figure eight.
Avery said later that his crew would eventually fell both pine trees — which will bring to 15 the total of storm casualties.
Other fallen trees and limbs did not hit any buildings, Avery said. However, one limb took out a fixture on a light post.
Avery said the storm struck hardest between midnight and 6 a.m. Sunday, with wind gusts from 50 to 70 mph — almost as bad as the windstorm of Jan. 4, 2008, when the campus saw gusts of 70 mph and higher, just short of Category 1 hurricane status.
After that storm, the grounds division hauled off an estimated 1,600 cubic yards of debris — enough to cover a football field 2 feet deep. This time around, Avery said he expects his crews will haul off about 1,200 cubic yards — all of which will go to compost.
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Dave Jones, Dateline, 530-752-6556, dljones@ucdavis.edu