Sunday Morning Storm

Early Sunday morning, John and I were still up (after he came in from Missouri late Saturday night) playing games when we heard a rumble of thunder in the distance along with a rushing sound, which sounded like wind. John, being the astute young man that he is, asked, "Is that wind?"

I opened the French doors to the back porch and sure enough, the wind was blowing something fierce. I tried to get the weather channel on tv or a local station to see if we had warnings that were non-existent, other than the damn heat advisory we seem to be constantly living with now, just an hour earlier but about that time the lights began to flicker, dimming every couple of seconds and the tv /cable going on and off before sure enough, we were in the throws of a full fledged power outage which lasted close to 4 hours.

There was little to do after we lit candles and tried to finish the game we had been playing other than to setup a movie on his laptop, to which we both immediately fell asleep (insert family joke here, particularly about me being unable to stay awake during movies). I did wake up when the power came back on and set a couple of the clocks, but have to admit the ones in the back of the house are still flashing yet today! It didn't take long to fall back asleep and finally when I woke permanently and went outside I found a lawn full of debris, including leaves, sticks, twigs, pine straw and fairly good sized tree limbs that were downed in the straight line wind that came through here. There wasn't enough rain to have left any real evidence or to cool things down as the heat advisory was never lifted throughout the storm. I don't think there were any injuries and while our immediate area was hit fairly hard the worst of it was southwest of here, which was expected to be without power most of Sunday.

John was kind enough to help me clear up the biggest part of the mess, the larger pieces of debris and I raked up a fair bit from the front yard which was the hardest hit. The rest of the debris that's left can easily be mulched up the next time I mow.

Here's a couple of photos of what we cleared away from a very brief windstorm, that probably only lasted 15 to 20 minutes but carried quite a punch.


(yard debris raked up from the front lawn)


(pile of tree limbs, sticks and twigs that fell during the storm)
It will be at least October before I can burn again with the heat and drought here but that's what I'll do to the limbs on the old garden site. The debris will be bagged and if my trash service won't haul it away for me then I'll have to load it all up and take it to our landfill. Ginger would like that as she goes with me anytime I go there.

You can see pictures of further damage from the storm and clean up efforts in this area here.

Oh, the heat advisory is still on with temps expected to be well over 100° with heat index of 115° or higher a good part of this week!

I think I see a visit to my mom in Indiana in the near future!