Too close for comfort

Last night we got an intense storm system that rolled through. We had gone to the village meeting, and when it wrapped up at nearly 10pm, we headed home. It was a crazy lightning storm at this point, and I've never seen it like that before. It was flashing so fast, it was like a strobe light. I had heard that we could possibly expect a storm, but I didn't think it was going to be anything serious since it had been a sunny, HOT day. I really thought the lightning show was more from the heat than anything.

Once we were home, I took a shower and had just finished washing my hair when we lost power. FABULOUS! I swore out loud, and figured I'd just tough it out and finish up before trying to find my way to a flashlight. It was only out for about 20 seconds, thank goodness! I finished up quickly, afraid I'd be in the dark again, and when I got out, I could hear the storm battling against the house.

It sounded as if the windows were going to break apart, and like the siding was being ripped right off the house. I heard clanking against the windows, and we could only assume it was hail since we couldn't see much out the windows.

We realized we forgot to bring in our flag from outside, and since it's been ripped clear off the house before in strong winds, we knew we had to get it inside, for fear of it being thrown through a neighbor's window or something. We couldn't even get out our front door! The wind and rain was coming so strong right in our direction, that we couldn't get our storm door open.

I went to the back of the house, and that's when we realized just how bad it was. We saw some of the kids toys in the backyard, which we kept in our shed on the side of the house. When it finally calmed down just a tad enough to get out the door, we went out to see the damage.

The storm completely tore apart the shed we had (plastic, like a 'rubbermaid' type thing, not super big) and tore through the storage totes and kid's toys that we had in there. We had balls, baseball bats, frisbees, chalk and other outdoor toys all over our yard and in the neighbor's.

We found a lid to a tote almost in the street, another lid a couple doors down (along with some more toys), and the bulk of our shed was taken 4 houses down.

We were drenched by the time we were finished, and we came inside to find that many of our neighbors were out across the street, picking up the pieces to their gazebos/canopies they had on their patios. Those are completely trashed, and when I went out on a walk tonight I saw a couple trampolines that looked as if they had been picked up, twisted and then thrown back down on the ground again.

We are lucky it wasn't worse.....this is the most intense storm I think I've ever witnessed, and I'm not sure I want to ever go through that again. What a night!