Stormy Weather

"Holy crapparolli" as an annoying ex-co-worker used to say...

We had the mother of all storms early this morning. I woke up about 3:50 this morning to hear torrential rain and wind. It was wailing big time. The power was out, of course, so it was pitch black (when the lightning wasn't striking).

When I finally got up (around 7:15), the power was still out. As I was walking down the stairs, I saw that the house across the street had had its fence smashed to pieces. (I think they also may have had a car with its windshield shattered, but I can't confirm that.) The house behind them "used to" have a tall weeping willow; now it's lying across the front yard and half the street.

I surveyed our front and back yards from inside the house, and all seemed okay except that the wind had knocked the cover off the grill and the roses on the arbor seemed to have blown over onto the neighbor's side (which we'll have to move when we get home later).

When I left, Hank had to open the garage door for me, and while I was driving down the alley, I saw that this house that has a huge tree in their backyard had lost a large chunk of branch in the alley (but not enough to block passage). I was able to confirm that our house had no visible damage in the front (man, were we lucky!).

On the rest of my drive toward George Bush tollway, I saw more branches littering people's yards and a few more shattered fences. I even saw a street sign and a traffic light on the ground! There is a private school near us that has a large sign for their football team on their field; the sign had blown into the yard across the street.

Naturally, the traffic lights were out, but people must have tarried at home to survey the damage b/c there was absolutely no traffic at all to get to work.

In the meantime, I hope the power comes back on soon... but not like we have any TV to watch since our HDTV blew out last night (and not b/c of the storm)!!!