Storms, Chaos and Destruction! The Weather Gods got Angry!!

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:15]Just hoping that this old OP doesn't fall on my house.

[00:00:19]The only damage so far is the prayer flags that came loose. Let's hope it stays that way.

[00:00:27]So, a bit of a low in the wind now. Just hoping that the trees don't fall on my house here in the forest or that my solar panels go flying.

[00:00:43]>> Two days later.

[00:00:45]>> Well, my access to my house is completely blocked by a massive fallen tree. But you can probably hear that my night in shining armor has arrived.

[00:00:56]Let's go see what he's up to.

[00:00:59]Had a lot of rain here and uh of course all those hectic winds yesterday.

[00:01:07]Just something else, eh?

[00:01:28]Why yellow?

[00:01:33]>> Good morning, sir.

[00:01:34]>> How are you?

[00:01:35]>> Yeah. No, >> it's a big one, eh?

[00:01:38]>> Yeah, it's a big one.

[00:01:39]>> I mean, what is the diameter of this thing? It must be a good >> Sure.

[00:01:44]>> 40 50 >> 50 cm.

[00:01:46]>> 60 70 E.

[00:01:47]>> Yeah. 50 60 70 cm. Yeah, >> more than half a meter.

[00:01:53]>> It's going big one.

[00:01:54]>> At least we survived the wind.

[00:01:55]>> We did survive the wind.

[00:01:59]>> Wind gust exceeding more than 120 km per hour were recorded in some locations.

[00:02:13]Jason just arrived with some more chainsaw go juice.

[00:02:20]This is Morning Star in case you don't know. That's my other old Nissan hard body >> truck that I've had for years here on the farm. 4x4.

[00:02:29]>> Just a small 2.4 L petrol engine. But what a chance to use.

[00:02:33]>> We can drive it everywhere. And Wayne has been using it a lot lately just to get in to cut some trees and all sorts of things.

[00:02:41]>> Are you going to be joining the party here?

[00:02:44]>> Yeah.

[00:02:46]Can't stand at home all day.

[00:02:48]I was doing dishes when he came to fetch me >> in his pajamas.

[00:02:54]>> What could I say?

[00:02:55]>> Yeah. Well, while we've got the gap in the rain, eh?

[00:02:58]>> Yeah.

[00:02:58]>> I mean, it's been pushing this morning already.

[00:03:02]>> The whole load bed is a bit stuffed.

[00:03:04]>> Brand new, man.

[00:03:05]>> But, um, >> who cares? It works.

[00:03:10]>> It works.

[00:03:11]>> Right trust, isn't that right?

[00:03:12]>> Yeah. These are bits of pipe that we've been using to fix some broken water pipes that's crossing the road and got smashed. There's been a lot of stuff going on here. Recovering. Oh, yeah. You bring the big gun now, eh?

[00:03:26]>> Yes. This is a the proper boy.

[00:03:28]>> This is your husky.

[00:03:29]>> Yeah.

[00:03:30]>> M we've been using a little baby uh but this is the MS170.

[00:03:35]>> That's it. E. Yes.

[00:03:36]>> It's actually been doing all right considering it's a good saw.

[00:03:39]>> Yeah. I know. It's through this thing like nothing.

[00:03:41]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:03:42]>> That's because the guy who sharpened the chain knows what he's doing.

[00:03:45]>> Yes. Yes. Makes a difference.

[00:03:48]>> You see, that's what I'm talking about.

[00:03:51]The master at work. That's what makes the difference.

[00:03:57]>> All right. That's starting to drizzle again. So, I don't know how long this is going to carry on before we have to run for cover. Let's see.

[00:04:10]Challenge with this tree is that it's lying under tension. You just cut it through from the top. Jam your saw and you will never get it out. You have to give it some relief cuts from the top first and then you cut from the bottom upwards.

[00:04:53]Well, the rain is coming down, but the boys are still at it.

[00:04:58]Another tree that's down. But at least we can still get up and down this road.

[00:05:04]Although it's pretty badly washed away on it.

[00:05:22]>> It's not so much.

[00:05:26]>> Well done. Good landing.

[00:05:30]>> That remaining piece just decided to go.

[00:05:35]>> Saving us a lot of trouble. We can almost get through.

[00:05:42]>> We're going to run. It's really pouring now.

[00:05:44]>> Yeah.

[00:05:45]>> And we'll look at it all again. Thanks a lot. But at least now we can get through here.

[00:05:50]We'll catch you later. I'm soaking wet and you must be too.

[00:05:53]>> Yeah. All right.

[00:05:54]>> Several days later. As they say in a sporting world, rain has stopped play here pretty much for the past two weeks.

[00:06:04]And talking of sports, we had a different kind of sports here. We had these two serious cold fronts come through and they patted us properly.

[00:06:16]Last week we had several days with heavy rain. I mean, we recorded over 200 mm in just one day. That's nearly No, that's more than 8 ines of rain.

[00:06:28]And then a week after that, another cold front came through and this time with heavy winds and yeah, gusts of up to 170 km an hour, we reported in some parts of the southern Cape. So, there's been major damage in many parts of our province.

[00:06:50]House roofs blown off, trucks blown over. Oh, you see trees crushing people and cars, flooding, drownings.

[00:07:00]Lots of uh our major highways have been destroyed.

[00:07:20]Heat up here.

[00:07:57]Utter chaos and destruction everywhere in the province.

[00:08:01]Luckily for us, we are blessed and we had relatively minor damage to infrastructure in comparison. Hey, but as they say in the classics, this two shall pass.

[00:08:16]So, the storms are over. The sun is out again. I'm out on foot to explore my world and assess the damage.

[00:08:25]And then we can see what we need to do to fix and repair and mop up so life can get back to normal.

[00:08:36]Well, here in this axis road, also some big trees down.

[00:08:43]Let's go have a look and see what's going on here.

[00:08:46]I've been chopping a little bit here with the baby chainsaw, but yeah, you're not going to pass through here.

[00:08:58]Huge root ball exposed.

[00:09:01]If I fall in that hole, I will disappear.

[00:09:07]There's actually a whole clump of trees that grew together here that crashed down.

[00:09:14]Destruction and chaos.

[00:09:16]Yep. I ain't going to be driving down this road for a while.

[00:09:22]I don't even think you can walk through here.

[00:09:27]Maybe I can get through here.

[00:09:30]Let me see.

[00:09:32]I'm over this big log here.

[00:09:36]or stump or whatever you call it. Trunk and through to the other side.

[00:09:51]This is another access road to my house which is not going to be drivable for a while.

[00:09:58]Down there is another tree that's falling over.

[00:10:03]Well, I'm not going to get past this thing now. But if you look carefully right there, you'll see the roof of my house. So, the other road to get to my house is on that side. So, that's the one that we cut open where that big old piney went over.

[00:10:22]Now, if you walk down this foot path, you'll get to that little cage cottage here in the forest that I rent out. And there used to be a foot bridge here so that you could walk along and cross the stream, but it ain't no more. There it is now.

[00:10:42]The water took it away.

[00:10:47]Can still access this place from that side though. catch a brief glimp of the half moon hollow eco cottage that's currently closed. Flashback to when a little stream reached its highest point and amazingly the foot bridge in front of my house stayed put.

[00:11:11]More chaos and destruction.

[00:11:14]Me and her wife is very sad about this tree that came down.

[00:11:18]You can see it there. It's quite messy, but um yeah, we planted most of the other indigenous trees here when we were much younger and now they've been damaged quite severely.

[00:11:31]Thankfully though, that big one came down just missed my car port here. It was a little bit longer if it had fallen on that roof. You can see it's very close.

[00:11:50]For 25 years, I drove past this old tree pretty much every day. Yeah. Now he is no more.

[00:11:59]And he will become firewood eventually when we get to it with everything that's going on. Bam. Bam. Bam.

[00:12:10]Bam. Crash. Bang.

[00:12:14]BANG.

[00:12:16]BANG.

[00:12:18]BANG. BANG. And many, many more.

[00:12:25]This is the road that I have to take to get from my house to my workshop.

[00:12:30]And um right here is a very clayy mess, but it doesn't look so bad. But further up, there's some pretty nasty, what would you call it? Erosion.

[00:12:45]where the road is washed away.

[00:12:48]Right here's a big old hole.

[00:12:51]I don't think the camera will really show how deep it is, but I promise you no two wheel drive vehicle will get up here.

[00:12:59]Let's go take a look up there.

[00:13:04]Still seen some uh water filtering down even though the rain is over.

[00:13:13]So right here we've got some pretty bad holes.

[00:13:33]Heat.

[00:13:53]Heat.

[00:14:11]Now here you can see this is the water pipe that feeds water to my house that they got exposed.

[00:14:18]It's all the soil washing down and it actually broke.

[00:14:22]I just made a temporary repair there just so that we can have water flowing again.

[00:14:28]We're driving up here with any normal 2x4 bucky or truck ain't happening.

[00:14:37]We need at least a 4x4 right here. Got a pretty nasty hole as well.

[00:14:48]It can't pass through here.

[00:14:51]It's a normal vehicle. So, let's see what's happened up here. I can uh see nothing has fallen on my shop. So, we're good up here so far. But this is not my first rodeo. I've seen it happen in this part of the world. They've been here for 25 years. So, my shop and even these trees right next to it is protected by that whole forest of pine trees up there and our predominantly bad winds, if I can put it like that, does come from that direction. Blows this away. So, that provides good protection.

[00:15:25]So everything here is still standing, but there might be some flooding there.

[00:15:30]So I better go and check out for that. I can see a few bits and pieces got blown around here. There's lying the bonnet of that str, but that's no big deal. Couple of other things fell over that grill over there. Anyway, let's go look what's going on here. Nothing that serious though. very wet here. Yeah, you can see the water came down there. There's freaking mud everywhere.

[00:16:01]But um yeah, it's all still standing.

[00:16:05]You see how wet it is here? Look there.

[00:16:08]No doubt.

[00:16:10]And the gut is overflowing water coming down the hillside here and just washing in here.

[00:16:16]I really do need better drainage here.

[00:16:20]But then again, we had close to 200 mm of rain. 8 in of rain. So, considering that, yeah, not too bad.

[00:16:30]Do have a bit of a lake here though, filled with twigs and branches and leaves, so some cleanup will for sure be necessary. A little bit of water managed to find its way into my shop here, but nothing major. It will dry out soon.

[00:16:48]>> So, lots of power lines also went down.

[00:16:51]Um, we've been without power here for a good few days. We still are. Yeah. So, nothing much has happened up here in the shop. And thankfully down by my house, I'm fully off grit. Got solar panels and a whole system. So, no worries down there. So, hopefully by the time I see you again next week, something would have happened here. At the very least this week, I got to start fixing roads and mopping up. Thanks for hanging out with me. I'll see you oaks next week.

[00:17:19]Another one.