Stiff winds Sept. 11 damaged at least one Wauneta-area property, leaving downed trees that took days to cleanup.
    Patsy McKinney said about 20 trees on her property seven miles northeast of town were felled by the winds.
    McKinney said she was in her living room around 8:30 p.m. with her husband and son when she heard what sounded like rain and hail hitting the house. She went to the back door to look outside, while her son went to the front.
    “He said, ‘It’s the wind. Everything’s hitting our windows,’” she said.
    She walked to the front of the house and “the wind was so bad that I didn’t dare open the door or anything,” she said. “When we could see — it took five to seven minutes, maybe — then it was just a regular storm and it started raining. The wind was blowing, but not like what it did.”
    When they finally went outside, “the trees were down everywhere. We had a 50-, 60-foot Colorado blue spruce right in our front yard; it blew over and the roots were out.”
    A Ponderosa pine was in the same shape, its roots exposed.
    And even trees that weren’t uprooted “were all broke apart,” McKinney said. “It even lifted the tops a long way, several feet.”

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