Weathering the storm

Last night we had a major storm roll through East TX. Our little town was right in its path too. I woke up, at 2 am to the sound of a train and a lot of banging around on the house. I ran around the house closing windows, amid the lights blinking on and off, because the rain was blowing sideways and coming straight in. After that I tried to get a weather report. First with the TV, but the cable was out. Then with the radio, but the power went off and on. So I grabbed the hand crank radio and could only get ONE station to tune in and it wasn't the weather. That is when I called my spouse at work to see if he had heard anything, but he had not. By this point the wind was howling and we could hear limbs breaking. The power came back on and I jumped on the computer and pulled up the local TV station and found out that we were in the middle of a HUGE storm..... with rotation. The weather man never said a tornado had touched down, but we were in a tornado warning. As soon as I got the report, I could tell the storm had moved on. As a matter of fact I was still on the phone with Bobby, who was at work 22 miles away and he said it had just hit there. The time laps was only 20 minutes. I still stayed awake for a couple hours and then finally went to bed at 4 am. The next morning we went out to survey the damage. This is what we found.

This is a picture of the eves of the house. All this trim will need to be replaced. It probably needed it anyway.


The next two pictures are the pear tree we lost. This tree was about twenty years old and gave a lot of fruit every fall. This is our biggest loss. But I just happen to have another one that I just purchased and now I know where we will put it.



I find it amazing that this tree managed to fall in the one place that didn't have a car, lawn mower or the pool in its path. It missed all of that.



My little potato patch with all the debris blown all over it.



More limbs and debris near all the animal pens. The huge Oak Trees in and around the animal pens are still standing and none of the animals were harmed.



This last picture is a branch that is about 12" diameter. It cracked length wise and did not disconnect from the tree. The other end of it is hanging down toward the ground. The base of this tree is 3 feet from the back corner of our house, which is my bedroom. The wind was blowing from that side of the house and after finding this we figured out that the whole broken branch was swinging in the storm slapping the side of the house. That was the banging I heard.



We were lucky. All we have is just a bunch of clean up to do. Some of my neighbors have a little more damage. One neighbor had a very large tree land on his BIG tractor. Life doesn't look to good for that tractor anymore... poor thing. I gave thanks to the Lord for keeping us safe.