KFI| Emergency workers in Washington State had to dig out motorists after tumbleweed trapped their vehicles on Highway 240 in Yakima. The highway had to be closed in both directions after heavy winds blew the tumbleweed onto the roadway, leaving five cars and a semi-truck trapped for roughly ten hours on New Year’s Eve. MORE
Not sure how that is possible, those things explode when you drive into them. I hit a large cluster on I-10 in Arizona and it disintegrated. Must be tougher in Yakima….
I didn’t realize they had tumbleweed in Washington State. Always thought they existed only in drier barren areas. On a side note, now I can’t get Jack Palance singing that song out of my head.
Roy Rogers & Sons Of The Pioneers…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQc5gDXQGIs
Different Tim, you would be surprised how dry eastern Washington is. Just think of it as the northern end of the Mojave Desert.
Wow! Amazing and scary! Close proximity to where we had our iOTW get-together last year! Could have been pretty interesting. Have there been anymore get-togethers in other parts across the land? Maybe I missed the posts on them?
It’s the attack of the killer tumbleweeds!!! Run away! Run Away!
… to the accompaniment of Ann Nonymous Prime’s post ….
“Way out west there was this fella I wanna tell ya about. Goes by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least that was the handle his loving parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. See, this Lebowski, he called himself “The Dude”. Now, “Dude” – there’s a name no man would self-apply where I come from. But then there was a lot about the Dude that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that’s why I found the place so darned interestin’. See, they call Los Angeles the “City Of Angels”; but I didn’t find it to be that, exactly. But I’ll allow it as there are some nice folks there. ‘Course I ain’t never been to London, and I ain’t never seen France. And I ain’t never seen no queen in her damned undies, so the feller says. But I’ll tell you what – after seeing Los Angeles, and this here story I’m about to unfold, well, I guess I seen somethin’ every bit as stupefyin’ as you’d seen in any of them other places. And in English, too. So I can die with a smile on my face, without feelin’ like the good Lord gypped me. Now this here story I’m about to unfold took place in the early ’90s – just about the time of our conflict with Sad’m and the I-raqis. I only mention it because sometimes there’s a man… I won’t say a hero, ’cause, what’s a hero? Sometimes, there’s a man. And I’m talkin’ about the Dude here – the Dude from Los Angeles. Sometimes, there’s a man, well, he’s the man for his time and place. He fits right in there. And that’s the Dude. The Dude, from Los Angeles. And even if he’s a lazy man – and the Dude was most certainly that. Quite possibly the laziest in all of Los Angeles County, which would place him high in the runnin’ for laziest worldwide. Sometimes there’s a man, sometimes, there’s a man. Well, I lost my train of thought here. But… aw, hell. I’ve done introduced it enough”
… on another note …. “It’s a trap!” ~ Admiral Ackbar
When I was a kid growing up in West Texas, we didn’t have a lot of snow. But the Weekly Reader had fantastic stories of snow forts and snowball fights. Our best alternative was hunkering down in forts built with piles of tumbleweeds and throwing dirt clods at each other. After a few good hits, it didn’t take our moms to tell us this wasn’t a good idea!
I was on that highway a week ago Monday coming back from Yakima. Believe me that area down there is about as BFE as BFE can get down around Hanford, there isn’t a damned thing down there but sagebrush and very dry empty country and it as about as close to the Mojave Desert as you can get and just as desolate. It was also one the main reasons the US Govt. built the Hanford Nuclear energy sites during World War 2 in that area because of its isolation and remoteness from the rest of the country and being right on the Columbia River where they could get lots of water for their nuclear projects.
At least the face of Rattlesnake Ridge hasn’t slid off into the Yakima River. Yet.
W/o our dams the whole thing reverts to the scablands. Yes, that is what central and eastern Washington was called. With our dams that area produces like crazy. That is why the progs are hell bent on dynamiting them. They are a hate filled lot.
Tumbleweeds are not native to America. They actually made their way to America from Russia with Russian settlers. They are a type of thistle.
Having lived in southeastern Washington, I can attest to the presence of tumbleweeds. After we purchased our house on the Yakima River, it took us several weeks to move from Nevada, When we arrived, the entire acre of our property was indundated with tumbleweeds. We couldn’t even get to the front door. It took 2 guys 2 days to clear them off. The combination of dry, high-desert, and high winds make them a menace.
Having lived in Ephrata for 3 years in the early 60’s I can tell you that I hate sagebrush as well as the only native trees being black locusts. It is too hot, miserably dry and very ugly scabland country in that area of central Wash. state. I consider that area to be the armpit of our state and without the dams on the Columbia River there wouldn’t be anything west of Ritzville all the way to Ellensburg. Those dams are what made Wash. state agriculture some of the best farmland in the country because of irrigation and the Federal Columbia Basin Reclamation Project as well as providing cheap hydro electric electricity to that whole area and a lot of Wash. state as well. And the Yakima valley is the largest producer of hops in the whole entire country because of the warm dry heat in that area. And we wouldn’t have as many apples either without those dams as well as Grant County, Ephrata, Moses Lake, Quincy, George etc. being the largest potato growing county in the entire nation. It may be BFE but it’s our BFE and without those dams it would be an ever bigger wasteland and a total BFE as bad or worse as the Mojave Desert in California.
As a “flatlander” from flyover country…
Question.
Dry tumbleweed, hot catalytic converters, vehicles stopped with the tumbleweeds jammed underneath…
Any fires?
There have been many sagebrush fires particularly on the stretch of I-90 between the top of the hill at the Ryegrass rest area and Vantage on the Columbia River down below which is approximately 20 or so miles. I had to turn around once and go back to Ellensburg and then down to Yakima and across that highway towards Hanford and Othello to get home because of a sagebrush fire in the barren hills along I-90. It was either that or face a very long wait while they were getting the fire under control.