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TOPIC: Wood-Rill Natural Area
http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees/browse_thread/thread/c618b4dd3947c6f5?hl=en
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== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Jun 21 2008 8:44 am
From: Lee Frelich


ENTS:

The forest floor at Wood-Rill Natural is finally green, for the first time
in many years (The deer and earthworm combination has eliminated the tree
seedling and herb layer on the forest floor). So, why is it finally
green? For the same reason the nearby Buick dealer has 300 Buicks just
like Bob's with about 100 dents each--hail. Golf ball sized hail brought
almost all of the leaves down from the canopy to the forest floor, making
it green for a few days. The trees will recover, but will have some dieback
of top branches due to stripping of bark.

We also had a really weird weather phenomenon yesterday in Minneapolis--a
haboob. I was on the way home on the bus, and suddenly the air was yellow
as a dry gust front outran the thunderstorm that produced it, pushing up
dust in front of the storm prior to the onset of rain. It only lasted 4-5
minutes, so it wasn't quite like the epic haboobs in Australia and the
Sahara desert, but it was interesting to see that we can get haboobs in
Minnesota.

Lee