15ft tumbleweeds trap drivers and force Washington state road closure | Hacker News Reader

15ft tumbleweeds trap drivers and force Washington state road closure

theguardian.com

99 pointssecondary57 comments

I heard tumbleweeds are an invasive species. Wikipedia seems to confirm:

"Kali tragus [...] is an annual plant that breaks off at the stem base when it dies, and forms a tumbleweed, dispersing its seeds as the wind rolls it along. It is said to have arrived in the United States in shipments of flax seeds to South Dakota, perhaps about 1870. It now is a noxious weed throughout North America, dominating disturbed habitats such as roadsides, cultivated fields, eroded slopes, and arid regions with sparse vegetation." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumbleweed#Plants_that_form_tu...

These are the western equivalent of Kudzu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudzu_in_the_United_States

I wonder if there any species from the Americas that are invasive to Europe/Africa/Asia... ?

In the Netherlands at least, an American species of freshwater crayfish has almost completely replaced the native species and its ecosystem is unprepared for it.

And grey squirrels in the UK, of course.

There must be more.

Similar situation in the UK, we used to haul crayfish out of our sailing lake each year by the boatload.

American freshwater crayfish infest all the rice fields here in Portugal. They cause a lot of damage to irrigation and drainage ditches but the number of things that eat them is enormous. It's probably the major reason White Storks here no longer migrate to Africa in the winter. At Vila Franca de Xira, near Lisboa, when the rice is harvested in October, you can see hundreds of thousands of ibis, herons, gulls, flamingos, egrets, spoonbills, storks, waders and everything else you can think of eating crayfish of all sizes.

Mud bugs and squirrels can make good meals, so there's an appetizing way of fighting back.

For example, Racoons: https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-overrun...

> Some residents fight back with steel traps or poisonous gas. Some even eat the comical pests, which are said to taste best marinated with celeriac and onions.

That's a nice "fuck you" to racoons . Free food.

I wonder where on the social ladder does eating 'coon fall over there? Is it somewhat up there like most things hunting/fishing related are? (because hunting/fishing/trapping your own meat was generally something the landed gentry did for recreation)

I really hope it's not in the bottom half just because of how uncomfortable that would make certain Americans.

To clarify my point, I'm hoping it's not considered low class to eat racoon in Europe

I don't think any American hunting and eating raccoon harbors delusions about the social status of such activities, even in places where it's relatively popular. If anything, it being looked down upon is a point of pride.

That said, I would imagine that raccoons carry a very high parasitic load on account of their omnivorous diet and the places they tend to poke around. I wouldn't hesitate to eat squirrel if offered (I may have even eaten it before for all I can remember), but I'd definitely pass on raccoon meat. (Feel free to correct me, though, about the safety of either squirrel or raccoon meat.)

>I don't think any American hunting and eating raccoon harbors delusions about the social status of such activities, even in places where it's relatively popular. If anything, it being looked down upon is a point of pride.

I agree. I'm just saying that if it's not considered low class in Europe (why would it be?) it'd be amusing if one of the people who normally looks down on people for eating that kind of thing comes across a European who a) occasionally eats 'coon, is b) of similar socioeconomic class to them and c) doesn't see what the big fuss is about because then said American would have to reckon with their prejudices.

>That said, I would imagine that raccoons carry a very high parasitic load on account of their omnivorous diet and the places they tend to poke around.

Yup. A willingness to eat meat and hang around dumpsters certainly ups the stakes. I don't eat raccoon but would have no problem eating one that I know is primarily fed from my compost pit. One from an urban area that's eaten raw meat from god knows what dumpster would give me pause. The same would go for sunk and possum. I'd have no problem eating a Boston Common squirrel. The nastiest thing they eat is probably moldy french fries.

Argentine ants are well known for having colonised Europe and largely eradicated the local species of ants. Phylloxera almost killed the French wine industry when it arrived in Europe.

American turtles (called "Florida turtles" in French, not sure of their English name) and nutria are also invasive species in Europe, but those were initially introduced on purpose.

Not just phylloxera but the various fungi species that create powdery and downy mildew, among other illnesses for which Vitis vinifera has no natural resistance. And therefore Europeans must now spray fungicides at a level they never had to before.

North America is the centre of diversity and likely origin of the vitis genus, and so has evolved pest resistance that the isolated Eurasian vitis vinifera/sylvestris has not.

Well, that's fascinating. I had no idea the French had the equivalent of french fries, french toast, french beans, french dip, french onion soup, french onion dip, french silk pie, and other stuff that has "french" in the name but probably has no real relationship to France.

Along those lines, "Philadelphia" cream cheese was invented in Goshen, New York. The city name was used because at the time, "Philadelphia" was synonymous with "quality."

You run into a lot of this kind of thing if you're in to word origins.

A known crowd-pleaser in this field is the "Jerusalem Artichoke"[0] which has nothing to with any of the words.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_artichoke

I'm convinced the second word was selected because prefixing an "f" tells one most of what one needs to know about this vegetable.

If you meant red-eared sliders as "Florida turtles", they're ironically banned for sale in Florida because they became an invasive species there.

Yep, that's it apparently. According to Wikipedia[0] though they are native to Florida.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-eared_slider#Distribution_...

The really interesting thing to me is that phylloxera was combated by grafting old world vines onto new world roots. So as I understand it, most of these super old established vines in France have American roots.

Shadows in the Vineyard [0] has a chapter about this for the benefit of anybody interested in reading about the incident.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18774145-shadows-in-the-...

I recommend the book "Dying on the Vine" by my friend George Gale: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520265486/dying-on-the-vine

"Dying on the Vine chronicles 150 years of scientific warfare against the grapevine’s worst enemy: phylloxera."

It's a very entertaining read, he tells the story excellently, and he has a deep knowledge of the subject.

(I know George through the grape breeders community.)

Ruddy Ducks. https://www.cabi.org/isc/datasheet/71368

Water Primrose. https://www.ada.org.uk/2018/09/invasive-species-alert-water-...

Northern Willow Herb. https://www.cabi.org/isc/datasheet/114114

...Australia?

We have cane toads. Lots of cane toads. We used to have cane toad drives when I was a kid to stop the spread south. We would fill up wheelie bins full of them and freeze them. Must people just used cricket bats.

In the end we lost. There were just too many of them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_toads_in_Australia

No surprise when you kill off the weak, dumb and slow ones.

Another example: late blight, the mold that attacks tomatoes, potatoes, and a few other plants originated in the Americas and "was a major culprit in the 1840s European, the 1845 Irish, and the 1846 Highland potato famines", according to Wikipedia.

Side note: tomatoes and potatoes also originated in the Americas so it's only natural that their associated diseases came from the same region.

Cliff Mass, a meteorology professor at the University of Washington in Seattle blogged about this last Friday[1]. There's a comment[2] from someone in the area who notes that some of those tumbleweeds were likely radioactive, since this is downwind of the Hanford Site[3], a relic from the Manhattan Project and later Cold War which has been leaking radioactive waste for decades.

[1] https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-meteorology-of-tu...

[2] https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-meteorology-of-tu...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site

Every time this happens, people start telling these stories.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-apr-15-me-51273...

Out of approximately 10k tumblweeds tested per year, approximately 20 per year are found to be radioactive, for values of radioactive approximating one CT scan. So even if you drag a geiger counter out there to find a hot one, then cuddle it for a while, it isn't as interesting as the campfire stories make it out to be.

Guessing the mutation rate in the seeds from the radioactive ones will be higher than normal?

Yes but most mutations just break stuff.

Radioactive tumbleweeds sound like a Hannah Barbara cartoon.

Thundarr the Barbarian!

some of those tumbleweeds were likely radioactive, since this is downwind of the Hanford Site[3], a relic from the Manhattan Project and later Cold War which has been leaking radioactive waste for decades.

I can't count the number of giant piles of tumbleweeds I've seen along US-95, US-6, and NV-375 (The Extraterrestrial Highway†) — the roads which encircle the Nevada National Security Site and Area 51. God only knows what they're contaminated with.

(The name has changed several times, but the NNSS is where the U.S. carried out over 900 nuclear bomb tests from 1951 to 1994. Today the tests are simulated, so some of the most advanced and secret supercomputers in the world are there. It's the only place in North America where civilian police and firefighters can train for radioactive emergencies in actual radioactive environments.)

† https://travelnevada.com/road-trip/extraterrestrial-highway

As somebody who grew up around there with a dad that spent his whole career as a chemical engineer working with nuclear waste, I'm here to tell you that most tales about the radioactive material around Hanford are highly overblown. I'm probably exposed to more radiation on a single plane flight than I ever got from tumbleweeds near my house.

The title is misleading. The individual tumbleweeds are only a couple feet in diameter. It was a 15ft pile of tumbleweeds.

But but but "journalism"! You're talking to the fourth-estate here, have some respect!

From the story. In 2018, tumbleweed swamped a town. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/18/attack-of-th...

Would be pretty scary thing to wake up to.

My risk avoidance systems detects danger in staying in the car within the pile of tumbleweeds, as I expect them to be easily flammable; isn't that the case?

yes, they are extremely flammable although likely to completely burn up within a minute or two as they don't have a lot of mass when dried out

not sure whether it is safer to exit the car and risk getting hit by another vehicle or risk being stuck under a burning pile

I don't know, I saw this on an Outer Limits episode once, those tumbleweeds are up to no good or maybe they are trying to communicate.......

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cry_of_Silence

Paging Crime Pays but Botany Doesn’t to Youtube some non-moss gathering desert flora outside of Chile.

It gets interesting when the wind ends up blowing just the right way. This was in Australia: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/feb/18/fast-... covering walls of a few houses. There are some specific underpasses that get covered every year as well.

I developed an allergy to tumbleweed whilst living in Colorado. So I moved to the east coast.

Ok, it wasn't just because of the tumbleweeds.

The sound a tumbleweed makes when it gets caught in your undercarriage and drug down the highway is... annoying. Annoying enough I'd sometimes pull over to remove them (particularly if I'd collected more than one). Couldn't imagine being buried in them :(

Couldn't imagine being buried in them :(

One of my favorite photos of my wife is where she's trapped inside our car, surrounded by piles of tumbleweeds at a rest stop in Arizona.

It was a windy day, and I stopped to use the facilities. When I came out, there she was — frantic behind the glass, not knowing what to do since it was the first time she'd ever seen tumbleweeds. Naturally, I couldn't pass up the photo opportunity.

This happened in Benton County, and tumbleweeds are basically the one thing that you're still allowed to dispose of by burning in the cities there. --When I was a child it was common to also burn the leaves in autumn, but that's been illegal since around 2000 or so, and for a number of years before then they had limited doing this in cities to specified burn days.

It would’ve been a perfect onion article if it was not real

Best ball pit

No way. Those suckers are all dried up and not 'soft'. They're scratchy and the branches can be sharp when broken. Jump in and you'll come out bleeding.

This coming from years of experience cleaning up tumbleweed piles against fences here in Colorado.

Somehow I don't think that truck is "trapped".

Probably not. But also probably unwise to drive if you can't see...

He could probably see just fine when he stopped. That picture is taken hours later after many tumbleweeds have piled up to the point of it becoming a newsworthy event. I think being reluctant to crunch the stopped Prius (or whatever) in front of him is why he doesn't proceed.

Yeah, now that you mention it of course he was stopped by the people in front of him :)

The article doesn’t talk about it, but is this also a result of climate change?

I believe that Western Washington is indeed experiencing less rainfall lately.

I believe that Western Washington is indeed experiencing less rainfall lately.

The local news report that The Guardian lifted its article from was from KAPP-TV, which is in Yakima. Yakima is considered eastern Washington, not west. It is on the dry side of the state where there are farms and desert.

SR-240 is firmly on the east side of the state, which is naturally a desert. The road runs through the Hanford site, so there's no agriculture on either side, just sagebrush and tumbleweeds (and elk).

Lifelong Washingtonian here, currently living about an hour from these tumbleweeds... this year has been dry (saw something about 50% less rainfall / snowfall than typical for this time of year...) but tumbleweeds like this are not really that unusual. One of my very earliest memories was being caught in a storm just like this one, just before xmas when I was about two. Much of eastern Washington is scrub, where if it can be irrigated, turns into excellent agricultural land.

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