Storming Our Way Through Summer

I grabbed a slightly earlier flight home on Friday and was home in time to spend a little time with my daughter (never a bad thing!).  We decided to jump in the pool after it got dark for Catherine’s first night swim.  She was running around the backyard in her nightgown trying to catch fireflies!

After our swim, a friend of mine called to ask if I was home.  He lives about 30 minutes West of us and said they had just experienced one of the most powerful storms he had ever seen.  I had no idea a storm was even coming, so I scrambled to start getting things picked up outside at our pool.  As I was in the process of trying to pull down one of our umbrellas (a 12-foot cantilever that weighs more than me), the power went out in the house.

So, I ran back inside to check on Michelle and Catherine.  A quick check and I was back outside to finish picking up the patio furniture.  Except, while I was gone, the job of picking up the patio furniture had gotten a little easier.  The wind had picked up our glass table and dropped it about 20 feet away, just in a lot more pieces.  I got the rest of the furniture secured and ran back inside.

The next morning we were still without power and the temperature was rising.  We have a generator that runs most of our essential items, except the cooling part of our HVAC (have to rectify that).  When it got to 85 degrees upstairs I finally decided to head to Home Depot for a portable air conditioning unit.  $400 later I got home and started lugging it up the stairs (heavier than I expected).  I got it upstairs into the master bedroom where Michelle and the kids were playing on the floor.  As I started to unpack the unit and read the instructions, the power came on!  Of course.

It took a full 12 hours to cool the house down to a normal temperature, but from what I understand today, over 100,000 people in our area don’t have power.  The type of storm was called a derecho, which Wikipedia describes as a widespread and long-lived convection-induced straight-line windstorm that is associated with a fast-moving band of severe thunderstorms in the form of a squall line usually taking the form of a bow echo.

Not sure what all that means, but it was the quickest storm I’ve ever seen blow in.  3 days later and I’m still using a shop vac to pick up glass in the backyard.

Anyway, I’m back to posting regularly now, and I’m not the only one who was affected.  View From the Wing had some fun as well.  Too bad he didn’t get to vacuum glass out of his backyard.