High winds, roof flies, RIP SCGO
Yesterday, Wednesday 2018 April 4th, Eastern Ontario had a wind storm. It’s not the first we have had. Back in 2003? we had the remnants of a hurricane roll over us, then a few days later a thunderstorm with high winds.
That first time, during the thunderstorm in the middle of the night, the SCG Observatory doors blew in and the wind lifted the roof off the building and threw it into a corner of the yard.
We managed to bring everything inside in the middle of the night, and in the next week or so repair the roof and remount it.
Yesterday the wind storm took the roof again, threw it against the fence and trees and raised garden beds. This time there is no repair.
The doors remained closed, the rolling stop block was intact. The prevailing wind gusts (clocked at 66kph) were from the SSW, and yet it looked like the roof went straight up, broke the holddowns and blew NNW.
There was a blizzard after the roof came off and the entire inside was coated in a layer of snow. We took everything indoors and there it sits, waiting for us to get over the trauma, and start cleaning, testing, checking and inventorying.
It does not appear that anything was really broken. All of the equipment covers blew off after the roof went. They were intended to only protect from drips or wind blowing precip inside, not for a storage area with no roof.
