Advertisement

Washington Man's Home Gets Almost Completely Buried Under Thousands of Tumbleweeds

Washington Man's Home Gets Almost Completely Buried Under Thousands of Tumbleweeds

A Washington man is hard at work clearing a mountain of tumbleweeds that blew onto his property and almost completely covered his home.

Dick Wilde of Kennewick told Fox News that the weeds — which created a thicket about 15 feet high around his house, which he shares with his wife and grandkids — “blew into my yard on Sunday night from the wheat farms.”

“The wind was strong enough to pick them up and blow them right into my yard. The stack reaches right to the top of the house,” the retired nuclear engineer, 73, told the outlet.

KAPP-TV and KVEW-TV report that despite the hours he has put in clearing the tumbleweeds already, Wilde said with a laugh that “it’ll probably take me two more weeks — if the wind doesn’t blow again.”

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Snowplow removing tumbleweed near Richland, Washington, on Dec. 31, 2019 | Chris Thorson/AP/Shutterstock
Snowplow removing tumbleweed near Richland, Washington, on Dec. 31, 2019 | Chris Thorson/AP/Shutterstock

RELATED: Iowa Students Earn PE Credit by Doing Yard Work for the Elderly and People With Disabilities

Fox News reports that winds reached 60 miles per hour over the weekend and that the combination of said winds and dry conditions led to the incident at Wilde’s home, which is located upwind.

“It is a fire hazard and they could go up in flames like a piece of paper. I need to have them cleared as soon as I can,” Wilde told Fox News, sharing that his city’s issue with tumbleweeds is the worst he has seen in over two decades.

Wilde may be retired, but clearing the weeds is currently a full-time job for the man, who has lived with his wife Gigi in the house (located at Olympia Street, south of West 45th Avenue) for 30 years, according to KAPP-TV and KVEW-TV. Rounding out their household are their grandchildren Ava, 10, Nathan, 13 and Kaylie, 15, Fox News reports.

The family is asking for help from those in their town in clearing the tumbleweeds as quickly as possible — a task Wilde has primarily been tackling for hours by hand, bundling up the weeds and bringing them to an empty field near his home, according to the local news outlets.

RELATED VIDEO: 30-Foot Tumbleweed Pileup Traps 5 Cars and a Semi-Truck on Washington Highway

Wilde’s story comes almost two months after multiple drivers in Washington state spent New Year’s Eve on a highway, trapped by a massive tumbleweed pileup.

It took more than 10 hours for the five cars and one semi-truck — all of which were all entangled by the sharp weeds on Highway 240 in Benton County near Yakima — to be rescued by officials, Washington State Patrol Trooper Chris Thorson told PEOPLE at the time.

Officers responded to the scene after receiving multiple 911 calls from motorists who reported that they were trapped on the highway, completely blocked by tumbleweeds that had reached 20 to 30 feet high.

“They keep compacting and get really heavy and thick and they’re hard to move and you can’t just touch them with your bare hands,” Thorson explained to PEOPLE, adding that tumbleweeds are “very prickly and sharp” and require wearing gloves to move them.