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Tumbleweeds bury Southern California town: ‘I can’t see my jungle gym’

Clark Mindock
New York
Wednesday 18 April 2018 17:32 BST
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Tumbleweeds bury Southern California town

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Strong winds in Southern California have left a town north of Los Angeles covered in tumbleweeds.

Photos show the tumbleweeds stacked against the sides of houses, nearly obscuring the entirety of some of the structures.

Some of the houses had so much tumbleweed buildup that the stacks reached all the way to the second floor of the buildings.

A spokesperson for Victorville — the town plagued by the descending mass of dried and dead weeds that tossed along the streets and into peoples' yards — said that as many as 150 houses were impacted.

"I can't see my jungle gym," one resident wrote in a caption accompanying a photo on Instagram.

That resident, Nancy Martinez-Brown, later wrote that the tumbleweed build-up is no new issue for her town. And, their attempts to make things better is sadly missing the mark.

"This happens over and over. The city is trying to make the owners of the property across the street clear the land but they haven’t don’t it," Ms Martinez-Brown wrote. "City plans on [putting] a 3 [to] 5 foot fence [up, but] by my fence is 6 feet and they just blow right over you can see them flying in the air as high as our second story windows."

The city's staff were sent, alongside the San Bernardino County Fire Department, to relieve Ms Martinez-Brown and her neighbours of their unwanted tumbleweed visitors.

The entire incident was sparked after winds of speeds as high as 50 miles per hour, according to the US National Weather Service in San Diego.

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