LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A haze of wood chips covered Jeff Houk's front yard in Anchorage after a tree narrowly missed his home on Sunday.
"It grazed our house," he said. "But if it had been five feet to the left, it probably would have taken out a third of my house. So yeah, we got really lucky."
JM Landscapers handled the cleanup job, calling in a crane for removal. They strapped the trunk, hoisted it into the air and took a chainsaw to the tree limb off before dumping them into a chipper.
The mess came from powerful winds during a pair of thunderstorms Sunday, which appeared suddenly.
"It was a little bit of a breeze [at first]," Houk recalled. "Then it was almost like the 80-mile-per-hour wind within seconds and it probably lasted a minute or two."
PHOTOS: Damage from strong storms in Kentucky, Indiana on May 26, 2024
Getting the crane to Old Herrods Creek Road was difficult.
Downed power lines and trees blocked most of the roads in the Anchorage neighborhood. People also dealt with behemoth trees uprooting, which pulled out easily because of how wet the ground was from Sunday's deluge.
Jim Martin's daughter and granddaughter had a harrowing journey home during the storm—driving through yards instead of the road. Martin, like his family, spent the day without power, but he brought his generator over for them before taking us to more large trees down on the backroads of his neighborhood.
Some of the trees were snapped in half at the trunk, blocked travel on Owl Creek Road at the end of Walnut Lane. Other trees showed their roots, pulled out of the ground entirely on the creek's bank.
"LG&E knows us well," he said, as power crews surveyed the damage.
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