The Storm

Last Thursday, I awoke at 5:30 to the weather radio beeping and then talking to me. What the "man in the box" had to tell us was that a severe thunderstorm was heading in our direction. After the chatter stopped I rolled over and looked outside to see what all the fuss was about. After thinking about it for a few minutes, I decided to get up and start packing things for our "weekend camping trip" (a very strange concept when you live in the motorhome...). All the flowers were stored in the Jeep and the chairs tucked away when Mike heard the second anouncement from the box and decided he, too, better get up.

All was securely tucked and packed and the slides were put in when we heard the first drops of rain very quickly followed by a tremendous shake of the motorhome. As we watched the trees out the front windows, a large limb let go and landed in the pond. The wind had to be near 50 mph. It was a tense few minutes as we watched the rain pelleting the windshield and the wind whipping everything in its path... and then there was calm. The yellow sky and the calm was the most unnerving as I just didn't know what was coming next.

Within 45 minutes from the first raindrops, we were out surveying the damage. Brenda (a neighbor) and I walked out the addition road aways to check things out. The photos were taken on Lake Jefferson. This is the a upsidedown pontoon on the end of Bob's dock - the boat belongs to a neighbor.

Farther down the shore we spot two twisted docks that used to run parallel to each other.
This piece of wooden dock was blown into the pond and then floated back out. It belonged to this dock a block from the canal.


And then it was time for cleanup.

By 1 pm the yard by our spot looked pretty good and we were on our way - a very eventful morning packed in our memory banks.