Friday, September 7, 2012

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

Hurricane-force winds blew into our neck of the woods Tuesday evening, knocking out power and wreaking general havoc.

Early Wednesday morning, we ventured outside to assess the damage.


Our 12-year-old was so scared by the loud wind that she insisted on sleeping the entire stormy night in our room. I guess her fear of a tree crashing over her head wasn't so crazy after all . . . that top window looks into her bedroom. Fortunately, the only real damage was to the rain gutter.




We recently marked several dead trees on our property with yellow tape for my husband to cut down this month. Not a single one of them fell over during the windstorm, yet a perfectly healthy tree (being run across by my daughter in this photo) was uprooted!



Who'd guess that a skinny birch's root system would be so massive? Well, sure, a biologist would know, but English majors like me might be surprised to see how much ground comes up with a tree.



One of the trees that holds the girls' playhouse cracked during the storm and probably would have toppled over if it wasn't attached to the structure. You can't really tell in the photo, but the treehouse is now leaning at a weird angle. The girls aren't allowed to play in this area until we can take care of the problem.




The electricity at our place finally came back on yesterday, but the power over at the girls' school was out until this afternoon. The kids had three days off, so I put 'em to work picking up the branches all over the yard and sweeping up the piles and piles AND piles of leaves on the deck and driveway.



Dinner last night: orange chicken over rice

Exactly two years ago:



8 comments:

Kathy G said...

If you keep those kids busy with physical labor three days, they'll be GLAD to go back to school :-)

Debby@Just Breathe said...

I am so glad you are all safe. That is a lot of damage. ((HUGS))

Unknown said...

Glad you are all safe. We had a bad wind storm come through here in central Pa. today, and we just hold our breaths watching our neighbor's ancient and very dead tree snapping and cracking in the storm. One of these days I fear there will be damage, and hopefully no one will get hurt. Part of it has already crashed down and destroyed part of our fence.

Michele said...

Okay, that was scary. Thanks to God that nobody was hurt and the damage was as light as it was. How are you going to take care of the treehouse problem?

I was also surprised by the birch's roots!

Michele said...

PS - I like how you tweaked your layout!

Katherine said...

This scares me. We've had some pretty big storms with a lot of wind lately. Anytime the wind wakes me up at night, all I can think about is the enormous tree in our backyard that is outside my bedroom. I have all sorts of images of it falling on the house and squishing me in my bed.

Hopefully, all the damage caused by the storm can be repaired without too much hassle.

Karen M. Peterson said...

We get winds like that here a few times a year. It's always a little creepy to see the damage. Luckily a tree has never crashed into my house, though!

Traci Marie Wolf said...

Wow! Crazy storm. It's so good that the only damage was to the storm drain. Also does the tree cracking mean you have to move the playhouse?