Monday, July 11, 2011

10-minute storm

When I opened my garage door this morning, I was expecting it to be another hot, dry day, as have been the last 30-60 days. It's summer. That's what happens. But there were dark purple/blue clouds in the sky. I thought it would probably rain, but maybe it would just blow by.

By the time I got to the end of my neighborhood, large raindrops and small branches were falling on my car. 2 miles later, I could barely see as the wind swept blankets of rain over my car. I pulled into work in the middle of a torrential storm that only lasted 10-30 minutes. Not long.

The first sign of damage was in the backyard of the house were I babysit. The very heavy table had been knocked over and upside down, and their heavy-duty wooden playhouse, which I couldn't have moved by my own strength, had blown across the yard and shattered into splintery wood pieces. At my house, our glass-topped table was shattered. Thousands of trees were torn apart or uprooted completely. There was damage at every yard. We were without power for the whole day, but some people were out for almost a week (I'm posting this a week later).

Yet just like when we had our blizzard a few months back, this storm did a lot of damage physically yet had a very unifying power over the neighbors. People joined together to help move branches, cut hanging limbs down, pile up the debris. People without electricity started spending time with people who's electricity had come back on. Blessings through the storm.

No comments:

Post a Comment