wind storm

Wow! What a wind storm! We had wind for a solid 9 hours with gusts up to 102 mph! Our little neck of the woods seemed to get the brunt of the storm. We are all fine with little personal property damage -- our siding, roof, and shed are all intact. I can't say the same for many others in the neighborhood however. With winds predicted to be strong we took what precautions we could and took slats out of our fence, put garbage cans and lawn chairs in the garage and outside toys and such in the shed. Our fence sustained the most damage -- it is leaning a little more than usual and a large branch from our neighbors tree fell on a section of fence near the shed putting a nice dent in the top horizontal post. Our basketball hoop is also leaning now, but still usable. Our roof and siding stayed intact, and our trees stayed in the ground :) The winds kicked up at about 2:30 a.m. and we lost electricity. We laid in bed listening to the wind and hearing objects hit the house. We saw what looked like lightening light up the darkness every so often -- it was really electrical transformers blowing up! The house shook occasionally, feeling like an earthquake, and we heard lots of odd noises and bangs. At one point I thought I heard the siding being ripped from our house, but apparently it was one of the neighbors decks being obliterated. Most every house had trees uprooted, with some landing on homes or cars. A couple homes had broken windows. There were tons of lost shingles flying through the air. I watched one of the condos lose half the siding from their home. One trampoline came to a brief stop and was rescued on the fence across the street during the storm. It was in shreds (metal posts too), by the time the owner and about 10 others worked to rescued it. Mark and Jared helped a few neighbors pull some trees from the roofs and rescued a neighbors trampoline from the fence between especially strong wind gusts. The wind finally started to wind down around 11:30 a.m. and we were fortunate enough to have our power back on around 2:30 p.m. The kids have been out of school for two days. One of our neighbors has access to a dump truck and wood chipper, so he and everyone who is willing to help went through the neighborhood and cleaned up the trees yesterday. We have good neighbors. We are so glad that our next door neighbors followed the prompting early in the spring to remove two large trees that were situated between our homes. Had those not been removed, we would have been in some serious trouble. We are grateful that everyone is safe and glad to have this storm over!

PS. Ryan had a lot of fun riding his ripstick in the wind! He really got a good ride with the wind at his back. And then he hit a rock and banged up his knee. Game over. (He's fine though)