THE WINDFALL PROBLEM IN THE KLAMATH REGION, 



OREGON 



By Robert H. Weidman 



Windfall affects our forests and becomes a serious problem chiefly 

 in the open stands left after selection cutting. Therefore, in the 

 Northwest, it is a problem mainly of the yellow pine forest. Our 

 experience with it is limited by the length of time existing since the 

 initiation of timber sales. In the Klamath region of the Crater National 

 Forest, the first cutting in yellow pine sales began in 1909. In the 

 eleven years since that time, three storms of more than usual violence 

 struck this region and threw down an appreciable number of trees 

 in the remaining stands. These storms occurred February 7, 1915; 

 March 17, 1918; and April 3, 1920. This paper, therefore, will deal 

 chiefly with the storm of April 3 and will consider the others only as 

 they are related to the windfall problem in general. 



The recent destructive winds occurred during a stormy period which 

 covered the first two days of April and prevailed over most of the 

 Northwest. The winds reached their greatest velocity on the afternoon 

 of April 3, and it is these winds which blew down most of the timber. 

 The direction was from the west and the winds were straight blowing, 

 violent gusts. They were in no sense rotary or of a tornado character. 



The damage from this storm was felt chiefly over a narrow strip 

 of country about ]") miles long on the west shore of Upper Klamath 

 Lake and Marsh. Over five and a half million board feet of timber 

 was blown down within this area. 



The percentage of loss by volume varied in spots from 10 per cent 

 to 90 per cent. In the case of the body of virgin timber at the mouth 

 of Cherry Creek (310 acres) the standing timber as well as the down 

 was cruised, and the actual computations here show the loss to be 

 30 per cent. 



It is interesting to compare with these figures those of the windfall 

 losses of the two earlier storms. The storm of February 7, 1915, 

 confined its damage mostly to the area of Varney Creek on the Pelican 

 Bay Sale, and the vohmie of all species thrown amounted to perhaps 

 500,000 board feet or 9 per cent. In the case of the storm of March 

 17, 191 8, a recent estimate places the windthrow at about 1,000,000 



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