The Wrath of Mother Nature

On Friday we had a huge t-storm come through our area. According to the local meteorologist the storm that moved through was called a derecho. I included a link to Wiki in case you would like to read more about this weather phenomenon. I was unaware of just the extent of the damage until I arrived home. I was at the movies seeing "Magic Mike" with my friend Karen, about 12 miles north of where we live. And while we heard a thunder storm while in the movies, there wasn't any clue to the destruction until we were about 2 miles from home.

When we got off our beltway and were heading down one of the main road, it became a game of bobbing and weaving....there were branches down in the roadway, it was pitch black and there was an eerie steam/fog rising up off the road making it difficult to see. We manage to make our way slowly to our neighborhood, being detoured once due to down power lines and trees. Anyway, when I arrived home I could see a large branch had been sheared off the neighbors tree. It is laying precariously on the power lines of the neighbor on the other side. As you can see, it took out their fence too. The tree company was here this morning hoping to take the tree down as it will become unsafe if left to stand. The have had to suspend removing the tree til the now live power lines are taken care of by the utility. We will be sad to see it go as it provided shade for our backyard during the hot summer months. Come the fall though it will be a godsend as I won't have extensive leaf clean up.

The extent of the damage that was done at our house was my huge tomato plant has been blown sideways....it's still laying there...we haven't decided if we will try to upright it, risking breaking it's stems and losing all the tomatoes that are on the plant or to just let it continue to lay sideways....I guess time will tell. The real damage though was the 48 hours of sweltering heat, that we endured. We had no power, so therefore no air, in the worst heatwave that we have had this summer. It was really terrible sleeping with it being so humid. Apparently I was not alone. Over 600,000 of the 1.2 million, customers that our power company supplies power to lost their electricity. Ours didn't occur because of the tree, it was something else that caused the blackout. But I guess we really shouldn't complain too much. We were able to get some relief during the day using fans that were powered by the little generator we own. We also were able to keep our refrigerator and freezer cold. We even cycled the neighbors refrigerators to help keep their food cold.

The only other casualties were in my perennial flower bed. The echineceas are blown sideways as is the large phlox. I'm sure they will recover and will enjoy their beauty even if it is at a slant. I am thankful for the power company restoring our electricity in 48 hours as there are still well over 200,000 customers without power as I write this post and it's another day of 90+ temperatures. Until next time....