OK, that's no way to put it. God loves castlewood. He just has to let mother nature lay the smack down every now and then or there would be great unrest upstairs.
I was talking to Sam last night and he told me about some cool maps and storm descriptions on the NOAA website. Turns out the storms of August 13 were pretty notable, as evidenced by the manually drawn map of the five strong downbursts that hit the area that day. There are a lot of cool storm damage pictures there too (like the one below). To see other weather events around here you can just go to the abundantly useful St. Louis weather page (not the forecast) and click "recent events" on the left side of the page.
Unfortunately for us they hit Castlewood dead on and put a lot of trees down over the trail. Sam said he and the rangers "have never seen anything like it." One thing I learned in the old-growth forests of the porcupine mountains is that down trees are a great thing for the forest. They're not so good for the trails which are completely unusable right now.
That's why they're calling for help cleaning up. People who know what they're doing with chainsaws are doubly appreciated but anyone can be put to work. Meet on Sunday August 21, 9:00 am at the Castlewood ranger station. See the gorc message board for more details.
LINKS GALORE:
August 13 event
Cool Aug 13 downburst map
Aug 13 Storm damage pictures
St. Louis weather central page
St. Louis recent signifigant weather events
Chat about trail cleanup
wikipedia entry for downburst
