Winds flood Eagle Mountain neighborhood with tumbleweeds

EAGLE MOUNTAIN, Utah — As strong winds blew Monday afternoon, Jacen Lewis said he looked out on the open fields just west of his home and east of the Cedar Valley Airport and it almost looked like large spiders were moving across it.

In reality, they were spindly brown balls of tumbleweed hurtling toward his neighborhood.

“We came under attack,” Lewis chuckled.

Soon, all the individual tumbleweeds were boxing in cars in driveways and filling up several yards on Seabiscuit Road.

“We could see tons of them just blowing up and over the backs of some of the houses,” said Chaz Smith. “For about 20 minutes or so, it just kept pouring in from the field behind us basically and just piling up everywhere.”

Neighbors said they had seen tumbleweed blow through before, but not in the volume it arrived Monday.

“This is 10 times worse than anything we’ve seen,” Lewis said.

Families used rakes to corral the tumbleweeds into piles on the street. Some of the piles were taller than 6 feet.

Smith said he called the city for guidance.

“They didn’t really have any suggestions and they basically guided me to where I just pushed it into the street,” he said.

Neighbors said they expected that the city would be by in the next couple of days to help clean up the migrating brush.

With more winds and winter weather expected into Tuesday morning, Lewis said he wasn’t certain where all the tumbleweed would be by the time city crews arrived.

“We’ll see if it’s still there in the morning,” Lewis laughed.