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nebroadwe... or, Why I Need to Find the Dustpan and Brush Now, or, Great Oaks from Little Acorns Grow, But Not on My Porch, Please.
On Thursday afternoon, a little before half past three, I was sitting in my living room, listening to a ball game and watching the sky darken, wondering whether my team (playing at home) would finish off its opponent before the rain started. The wind picked up first, as it does, lifting the branches of the oak next door and flipping the leaves on the jungle of ivy, maple saplings, mulberry bushes and random weed trees beneath it. It was a pretty stiff breeze, but nothing unusual. Lightning lit the clouds a ways off, judging by the delay between the flash and the thunder.
And there was nothing unusual, either, in the tappity-tap-tap-tap of rain that began to fall a few minutes later. I was curious about the occasional interspersed tick, though, and went to the window to squint out. We don't see much hail around here, but sure enough, the odd pea-sized chunk of ice bounced off the panes and onto the porch.
No, wait, make that blueberry-sized.
Quarter-sized?
And then Mother Nature gathered the entire storm into her palm and slammed it against my house.
The power went out. Rain and hail hammered down with a sound like fifty kindergarten classes armed with woodblocks. Eight feet away the world simply disappeared into a flat, gray blankness, water and wind hiding the sight and even the sound of tree limbs being ripped off and hurled every which way. The National Weather Service reported afterward that parts of my county experienced 75-mile-an-hour straight-line winds, hurricane force. All I could think at the time was that this was Biblical hail, wrath-of-God style, and I hoped he didn't have any particular animus against me. I pulled the curtains and ran for the bathroom, hoping further that none of my windows would break.
The roaring and rattling continued for a good five minutes, slowly letting up. When it seemed quiet enough for a peek, I went back into the living room and opened the curtains. Hail was piled up in the corners of the porch an inch and a half deep, the largest pieces approaching golf-ball size. The petunias in my window boxes were stripped of their flowers and lying in graceful swoons. The water globe in the eastern box had somehow been extracted intact and deposited atop the hail in the western corner. About a third of the neighbor oak had been sheered off, torn apart, and dumped variously on next-door's shed, my sidewalk, and my porch. The vinyl siding facing treeward was cracked and dinged.
When I ventured outside, I saw that I'd gotten off lightly. One of the balconies on the next building over had been partially destroyed, one whole side ripped free and lying on the sidewalk amid a welter of broken plastic flower pots. The potting soil had already been washed clean away. Another building, largely faced with brick, had its attic-level siding ripped off. Gutters dangled. And half a decades-old tree came down square on the roof of the building at the end of my row. Various shocked tenants were wandering about, exchanging repetitive stories. It began to rain again, so I went inside and turned on the radio, which reported that a daycare a mile or so south of me had lost its entire roof to the storm. The ball game was in a rain delay, and the grounds crew in a life-and-death struggle with the tarp. Fire trucks and ambulances began wailing past my house on a regular basis, snarling the early rush hour traffic at the corner (where the stoplight was out) even more thoroughly. As the skies cleared, news helicopters began regular flyovers. I walked out on my porch and waved until they went away.
My power was out for a good twenty-four hours, but luckily the storm brought a bit of a break in the heat and humidity with it. I opened all my windows and slept reasonably well. On Friday![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nateprentice's family rescued the contents of my freezer and fed me dinner into the bargain, despite having lost power overnight themselves. A tree fell on their electric line, but they were able to get it repaired within eighteen hours. Driving through the surrounding neighborhoods with them, I saw more trees down, more houses and cars damaged, and lots of landscapers and arborists at work, the beds of their pick-ups filled with leafy branches. News helicopters continued to hover. I knew the crisis was over this morning when I didn't hear one.
My correspondents in Tornado Alley will no doubt find this account thoroughly pedestrian, but as far as I can tell this was a hundred-year storm in my part of the world. Not many people seem to have been hurt, thank goodness, and the damage locally all appears reparable. And I still have three days of vacation left, so maybe I can actually get some writing in now ...
On Thursday afternoon, a little before half past three, I was sitting in my living room, listening to a ball game and watching the sky darken, wondering whether my team (playing at home) would finish off its opponent before the rain started. The wind picked up first, as it does, lifting the branches of the oak next door and flipping the leaves on the jungle of ivy, maple saplings, mulberry bushes and random weed trees beneath it. It was a pretty stiff breeze, but nothing unusual. Lightning lit the clouds a ways off, judging by the delay between the flash and the thunder.
And there was nothing unusual, either, in the tappity-tap-tap-tap of rain that began to fall a few minutes later. I was curious about the occasional interspersed tick, though, and went to the window to squint out. We don't see much hail around here, but sure enough, the odd pea-sized chunk of ice bounced off the panes and onto the porch.
No, wait, make that blueberry-sized.
Quarter-sized?
And then Mother Nature gathered the entire storm into her palm and slammed it against my house.
The power went out. Rain and hail hammered down with a sound like fifty kindergarten classes armed with woodblocks. Eight feet away the world simply disappeared into a flat, gray blankness, water and wind hiding the sight and even the sound of tree limbs being ripped off and hurled every which way. The National Weather Service reported afterward that parts of my county experienced 75-mile-an-hour straight-line winds, hurricane force. All I could think at the time was that this was Biblical hail, wrath-of-God style, and I hoped he didn't have any particular animus against me. I pulled the curtains and ran for the bathroom, hoping further that none of my windows would break.
The roaring and rattling continued for a good five minutes, slowly letting up. When it seemed quiet enough for a peek, I went back into the living room and opened the curtains. Hail was piled up in the corners of the porch an inch and a half deep, the largest pieces approaching golf-ball size. The petunias in my window boxes were stripped of their flowers and lying in graceful swoons. The water globe in the eastern box had somehow been extracted intact and deposited atop the hail in the western corner. About a third of the neighbor oak had been sheered off, torn apart, and dumped variously on next-door's shed, my sidewalk, and my porch. The vinyl siding facing treeward was cracked and dinged.
When I ventured outside, I saw that I'd gotten off lightly. One of the balconies on the next building over had been partially destroyed, one whole side ripped free and lying on the sidewalk amid a welter of broken plastic flower pots. The potting soil had already been washed clean away. Another building, largely faced with brick, had its attic-level siding ripped off. Gutters dangled. And half a decades-old tree came down square on the roof of the building at the end of my row. Various shocked tenants were wandering about, exchanging repetitive stories. It began to rain again, so I went inside and turned on the radio, which reported that a daycare a mile or so south of me had lost its entire roof to the storm. The ball game was in a rain delay, and the grounds crew in a life-and-death struggle with the tarp. Fire trucks and ambulances began wailing past my house on a regular basis, snarling the early rush hour traffic at the corner (where the stoplight was out) even more thoroughly. As the skies cleared, news helicopters began regular flyovers. I walked out on my porch and waved until they went away.
My power was out for a good twenty-four hours, but luckily the storm brought a bit of a break in the heat and humidity with it. I opened all my windows and slept reasonably well. On Friday
nateprentice's family rescued the contents of my freezer and fed me dinner into the bargain, despite having lost power overnight themselves. A tree fell on their electric line, but they were able to get it repaired within eighteen hours. Driving through the surrounding neighborhoods with them, I saw more trees down, more houses and cars damaged, and lots of landscapers and arborists at work, the beds of their pick-ups filled with leafy branches. News helicopters continued to hover. I knew the crisis was over this morning when I didn't hear one.My correspondents in Tornado Alley will no doubt find this account thoroughly pedestrian, but as far as I can tell this was a hundred-year storm in my part of the world. Not many people seem to have been hurt, thank goodness, and the damage locally all appears reparable. And I still have three days of vacation left, so maybe I can actually get some writing in now ...
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no subject
Date: 2010-06-26 06:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-26 10:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-27 12:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-27 12:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-26 07:43 pm (UTC)Well, welcome back and hello, news copters!
no subject
Date: 2010-06-26 10:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-26 10:51 pm (UTC)"I swear, Travis, God's honest truth. I really thought turkeys could fly."
no subject
Date: 2010-06-26 11:43 pm (UTC)"Oh, they're plunging to the earth right in front of our eyes! One just went through the windshield of a parked car!"
no subject
Date: 2010-06-26 11:49 pm (UTC)"Oh, the humanity!"
no subject
Date: 2010-06-27 12:53 pm (UTC)"Uh, for those of you who just tuned in, the Pinedale Shopping Mall has just been bombed with live turkeys. Film at eleven."
no subject
Date: 2010-06-27 03:49 pm (UTC)Now I have to go to Hulu and watch this again.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-26 08:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-26 10:02 pm (UTC)Good luck with the apartment hunt!
no subject
Date: 2010-06-27 04:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-27 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-27 02:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-27 03:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-27 03:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-27 05:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-27 07:49 pm (UTC)