Natural Disaster

This week, my family was blessed with the opportunity to participate in our local natural disaster! WOW!

Sarcasm!

The weather report issued a high wind warning, which we tend to take pretty seriously around here. Monday night I checked the warning to get an idea of what we were looking at, then we swept around the yard to get it ready before calling it a night.

After a few hours of fitful sleep and nightmares about the wind, I decided to get up at 5 AM (confession: strong winds terrify me). The windstorm had been as expected by that point, so I settled down on the couch to doze until the kids woke up.

At 6 AM, the wind suddenly picked up. A lot.

There were loud cracks and snaps as large branches broke. Out the window, I watched our picnic table flip onto its side and get pushed towards the fence. Then the power went out.

As I listened to the wind gusts, I got so scared that I woke the kids up and brought them down to the living room where it was safer, even though I knew the disruption would have them behaving like little monsters for the rest of the day.

At 7AM, it slowed down enough that we dared venture outside to look at the damage.

And we saw this:

The large pine tree in our front yard.

Thankfully, it fell straight along the fence line. Any other angle would have caused serious damage to either us or our neighbor. Eerily, it made hardly any sound when it fell.

Our power was out for two days.

I’d whine about it, but meh, we’re weirdos and it didn’t actually bother us that much. I liked the quiet, and it was nice to use the oil lamps and candles. We have a vintage gas oven, so I was even able to bake brownies while the power was out.

All told, it was considerably worse than the earthquake back in March.

More random destruction: