night pics of storm damage

We woke at 3:30 this morning (Monday) to a tornado siren. (sigh) It had been TERRIBLY hot & muggy all day with lots of people commenting about it. Travis (bless him!) had called, but we didn't hear the phone. Elaine was awake & heard the siren and came to wake us.

We spent about 30 minutes in the basement, looking at www.weatherunderground.com and other good weather sites (more thanks to Travis), and listening to the weather channel on our tiny hand-held TV, since cable had gone out. Welllllll, then there was a very strrrrrrange sound. It sounded like a tree fell; that was our only guess as to what that sound could be. So, through the torrential downpour, we shined flashlights out there and saw that, sure enough, we lost a tree! It's currently lying across the top of our house, hanging all the way down to the ground. Once the rain stopped, since I hadn't gone back to sleep, I shot these two pictures that turned out. So now I have to fit in a call to the landlord in the morning before the funeral.




So far it seems that there might be actually very little damage to the house!!!!! Amazing!!!!! But, it's too early to know much. All I know is that no windows broke (I'm sssssso thankful) and no moisture is coming into the house (I'm equally thankful for that!!)!! No other trees in our immediate vicinity are down, but it will be interesting to see what there is to see in the a.m. The reports were of winds at 80 mph, so it must have just been that tree's 'time'.... :( Very sad. I'm thankful that it wasn't one of our favorite trees, and that it won't cause us to lose any shade, since it was on the north side. LOTS of things to be thankful for, eh??