LOCAL NEWS
Tumbleweed piles up in front of house, leading to ’emergency’ response from West Jordan city crews
Apr 17, 2018, 12:17 AM | Updated: 1:23 am
WEST JORDAN — The rain and snow had yet to move in Monday when a wind storm deposited large amounts of something else in front of several houses.
Tumbleweed piled into some catch-all yards, and actually piled up to the roof of one home located near 5650 West and 7500 South.
“I haven’t seen anything like it ever,” said Bruce Butcher, who was working near the home at the time and saw someone’s post on social media about the tumbleweed problem.
He came over to the house and started recording with the camera on his smartphone.
Butcher called West Jordan City to see if anyone could help the homeowner.
“They said, ‘This is an emergency—we better come out and get this taken care of,’” Butcher said. “It was probably 10 weeds deep before they could get to the front door.”
Butcher said it took roughly an hour-and-a-half and more than a dozen workers to remove the tumbleweed from the property.
“I’m thinking there was like 3,000 tumbleweeds — there were so many tumbleweeds,” Butcher said. “It was crazy!”
Brian Clegg, the city’s director of parks and cemeteries, said crews collected and ground up as much as two tons of tumbleweed from that single home.
Other houses on the west side of the city also saw significant tumbleweed deposits.
A few blocks to the east, Rick and Dana Bishop had tumbleweed stacked up several feet deep along each side of the fence around their yard, blocking in a red sedan that sat on the side yard.
“It builds around, over this fence, and then they just hop over,” Rick Bishop said.
Dana Bishop said the couple faces clean-ups, like the one they faced Monday, as many as four times a year after significant wind events.
“This is the most we’ve ever had,” she said.
Clegg said homeowners are typically on their own to clean up the tumbleweed, but the circumstance at the home near 5650 West and 7500 South constituted an emergency situation.
He warned people, who face similar circumstances with tumbleweed in the future, not to burn it, to dispose of it.
Though it typically takes the Bishop family a significant amount of time to clean up their yard after a wind storm, they seemed to be taking the latest event in stride.
“We just invest in a good pitchfork and gloves, and we clean it all up!” Rick Bishop said.
