Fall weather: The gift that keeps on giving

Huge cottonwood went down between houses.  Difficult to get the whole thing in the picture.  Stump is visible to right and the tree extends off to the left. The visible trunk ought to give a reference point to the size of the tree. The first of the branches with leaves are at left.

First I need to figure out how to get that spruce on the ground
and then it becomes firewood. The downed cottonwood is between the camera
 and that house.

OK, so I went to sea for a while, writing in the process of storms at sea, the equinox, Alaska and oceans.  So what showed up?  Calm water, no wind and only a bit of rain.  Hardly what's to be expected this time of year in Southeastern Alaska.  But, while I was lolling away on a sailboat to the south, three more storms ripped through Southcentral, knocking down more trees, and raising rivers to dangerous flood levels.  As a matter of fact I read on line a news story that said, firefighters who were clearing blown trees from roads said they had seen several 50-foot cottonwood trees blown down in my neighborhood.  Unable to raise an alarm with anybody who might check the house, I raced home the following morning because there are several of those 50 foot cottonwoods in the yard, not to mention those dead spruce and a few more live ones in the 80-foot range.  Lots of branches down and one smaller spruce that got hung up in an alder on the way down.  In the neighbor's yard one huge cottonwood had fallen between our two houses, fortunately missing both.  There are trees down in other yards in the neighborhood as well.

Meanwhile elsewhere, flooding is rampant across this valley and three dikes are threatened with authorities now encouraging folks in Talkeetna (the closest town to the East Pole) to evacuate.  Flooding won't bother the cabin there as it stands on a hillside probably 300 feet above the river.

Several other streams in the Matanuska and Susitna valleys have overflowed and people have evacuated ahead of floods all across all three of the valleys here.  I live in the Knik River Valley which so far seems all right although that river is high, too.  Water has surrounded that house where the guest house fell into the river a few weeks ago.  Here's a gallery of photos from that experience.

Today we had sun  and calm but already in late afternoon it has started raining in Anchorage and the forecast is for at least two more storms to hit through here in the next 10 days.  Yippee!  I talked to a woman while I was taking pictures today who said she has lived here for 42 years and never seen anything like it.  I believe her.   We'll just have to hunker down and see what the new storms throw at us.

Just wondering has anyone read John Steinbeck's "Tortilla Flat?"  Am I going to have to find a chair leg and go out back to do battle?  It didn't turn out so well in that book. And, along that same line: If an insurance company refuses to pay for damages caused by an "act of God," shouldn't it then have to prove the existence of God?  But if there isn't one, who killed Danny?  Maybe there is no need for a chair leg, except to go after the insurance people.

Flooding at Talkeetna near the East Pole