Used to be a tall stack....

[nopoint]

Just because the telehandler lets you stack it tall doesn't mean you should.... If something like this has never happened to you that evidently means your time is coming. Its been leaning, guess I should have straightened it out. On the positive note I was a couple 100 feet away and got to see it go over... No one was hurt...  Not even any wind. Think it was probably wet snow clinging to the wrong side of the leaning stack... Guess I know what I'll be doing Saturday! 
(Lets see if my first attempt at a photo in the new interface works...)

[JD Guy]

Ouch 

[rusticretreater]

Large scale jenga is not fun.

[doc henderson]

I have a smaller pile of slabs to do but it was an 8-mph compact track loader that blew mine over.  Maybe wait till midnight when the pile is on the bottom of the earth, and see if you can just set it back up  

[nopoint]

Easier to see what I have now... Usually I knock them over with equipment, either way gravity is pretty dependable. 

[beenthere]

Likely was leaning to the south (or westerly). 
Reason was that side of the stickered stack was drying more than the north side, thus shrinking more and causing the stack to lean. 

Back in the day, air drying yards hired a person to just walk around the drying yard and tap wedges on that over-dry side to keep the tall stacks straight (to avoid your fail). 

Split wood stacked will do the same, leaning to the south.

[jpassardi]

Yeah, I'm guilty of stacking higher than I probably should -not typically more than 12' though. That looks like it may have been all of that.

Well, at least it's lighter/less moisture than the first time. The only thing worse than doing a tedious job is doing it twice... 

[nopoint]

Beenthere... Actually it tipped east. I think that the afternoon sun melted snow off westside and lightened it up. The row that gave way was some cherry slabs and chunks. Too good to throw out but probably not good enough for much. I'm kind of a sucker for cherry and we don't have too much by me. Tend to saw ugly little logs that would have been better suited for fire wood. 

[Magicman]

Did someone mention "high stacking" ??

This went as high as the telehandler could reach without contacting the overhead building. 

[Rhodemont]

Yikes, I can not reach that high to stack,

[Southside]

You could have waited a couple of days to post this and blame it on the eclipse. 

[SawyerTed]

Since earths gravity will be DECREASED by the eclipse, if he waits, isn't there the possibility the stack will stand back up on its own?  

Besides the dark at the height of the eclipse, the weight of the boards will be reduced so during the eclipse restacking will be easier.  

[longtime lurker]

There's a rule of thumb says lumber stacks shouldn't be more than 4 times higher than the width of the stack.

I keep making my packs wider cuz we still have a little bit of daylight to the roof beams yet

[cutterboy]

Every stack of wood has a mind of it's own and desires to be lying on the ground.

[Southside]

It is possible that the earthquake caused by the pre-eclipse is what caused the pile to fall over.  Myself I would just leave it there, since the New Madrid is going to go off during the eclipse anyway and it will just fall again.  If for some reason the big one doesn't hit then the reduced gravitational effect should remain around for a while so it will be easier to re-stack later. Of course the reduced solar energy might cause the wood to absorb more moisture during the eclipse and offset any gravitational advantage. 

[SawyerTed]

Then there are the Tsunamis on Lakes Superior and Michigan.  The lumber just might not be there after the eclipse.  

[Resonator]

If you own your own sawmill, you will get to stack lumber, and sometimes the same boards multiple times get your fingerprints.  
And if you sell lumber to the pubic, they will ALWAYS want the bottom boards on the stack.

[thecfarm]

There are a lot of use to be in life. 

[alecs]

In my browser, the thumbnail image in the original post is rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise, which therefore shows the fallen stack as being vertical again.  Problem solved!  Only problem is that the stand of trees in the background is all blown over.

[nopoint]

Magic man you have to work on your stack heights it looks like there are still a few inches available between the trusses. I've been known to climb up and add a few rows  to the top if I miss calculated.Have also had to take a row or two off when it was rubbing the roof... shed space is precious. 

The width to height ratio makes sense. That pile was probably a bit over proportion.

[Magicman]

Actually the customer ran out of logs. 

Job done, got paid, went home.  I saws um and leaves um. 

[Ron Wenrich]

The way we stacked lumber was to stack them 2 deep.  You can come in from both sides.  We also went 4 stacks high.  But, we tied the 2 stacks together by using 8' skids.  We also used 6x6s as runners for the bottom.  Lots of stability.

For bundles that aren't on sticks, we could put a trailerload of wood up like that and nothing would tip over.

[moodnacreek]

Some years back Joe at Boiceville lumber [Ulster county N.Y.] was killed when a pile like that fell on him. I always try to remember that while working the yard. My piles are always too high but the biggest problem is the covers blowing off. Most have truck tires on top but it is still hard to sleep on a windy night.

[Daburner87]

I was worried with my red oak slabs, had them about 7 ft high, and it was a little wobbly already so I wedged a shovel up against the stack and they withstood the wind.  They were stacked in my car port, and the wind ripped the tarp right off completely destroying the "extreme duty" tarps I got from Harbor Freight.  Literally ever ring in the tarp ripped out, cheap junk.   I think pre-covid they were better quality.

[TimW]

Was the tarp covering the carport?  I had a 30x50 foot tarp up over my sawmill.  It lasted 3 months until a strong enough wind uplifted the tarp and ripped all tiedowns out.  I found out the hard way that tarps are not made to withstand uplift.