Wednesday, July 22, 2009

The Great Storm

We have been offline for a few days because our Internet was knocked out by the huge storm we had here on Monday night.
It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen or heard.

It started to rain about 10pm... Anders was sound asleep. The rain started to get heavier & heavier and then it started to hail, so I went around the house & closed the curtains in case a window broke. Better to have glass in the curtains than all over the room. The hail continued & I went downstairs to see if Anders was awake--I thought there was no way he would sleep through the storm. It was incredibly loud! As I put my ear to his door the hail was pounding so loudly that I thought to myself "I'm not going to hear him crying, even if he is awake!"

Joel and I stood in our front window & watched. I wanted to go outside, but it was so intense, we couldn't even stand on our porch for fear of being drenched and hit with hail. We couldn't even see across the street! It was the first time I thought we might actually be in a tornado. Then the power went out. Then just as quickly as it started, it ended. And we went to bed. Anders never made a peep! Amazing!

Our neighbor- hood is a MESS. Trees down everywhere, people getting estimates on their roofs (rooves?) for damage. Crazy. We were only without for about 4 hours, while others in our area were without it for 2+ days. Joel cleaned off our roof & our neighbor's with their leaf blower. Our gutters were FULL of debris. Our yard was too. Thankfully, we had no branches down in our yard--some people in our neighborhood lost huge trees. This picture is from 2 houses down...

The only thing that was completely destroyed is my garden (as you can see in the picture above). I'm pretty sad about it. It was really looking nice & full this year.

So, that's the story. Pretty amazing weather. I can only imagine what Noah felt like on the Ark!


This is the same house pictured above from a different angle. They had quite a mess to clean up. It's pretty amazing this branch didn't fall on their house!

These two pictures are from down the street at our local elementary school. This tree looks like it just fell over, roots & all. They chopped the tree off and left the big stump. I don't know what they will do with the stump--it's huge!

4 comments:

my3boys said...

That is so crazy! All we got was very heavy rain and very strong winds. I thought it was bad here until I started hearing how other people fared!

Ski said...

I am glad you all are safe! I remember a similar type storm in the early '80's where hail blew out peoples windshields and back windows (Joel may remember-our dad's car was one of the casualties), dented cars and in one case I heard about it filled a cellar and lifted the house off the foundation. It was worse in some ways as it hit on a weekend afternoon when people were out and about. Sorry about your garden, did any of it survive?

Unknown said...

Glad to know that you all fared pretty well considering what could have been. Guess your son will be a sound sleeper!?! A picture IS worth a thousand words ... and you posted some great ones!

Nathan Charlan said...

Yep, I just put in for a claim on the house for roof, fence, paint, and gazebo. It was the most powerful storm I've ever witnessed in my 10 years in Colorado. I was fascinated and staring out the upstairs window while Renee screamed at me to get away. Huge hail and tremendous wind. I'm sure you've seen Renee's pics on her Facebook. I even saved a mourning dove that was knocked out by the storm. Found it in the front yard gasping and flopping and put it under our deck to protect it. amazing huh? Everyone would have thought I'd have just killed it ;)