The Aftermath

Well, the wind storm is over and we've all survived. According to news reports, this was the worst windstorm in our region since 1993. I can well believe it. More than one million people lost power and it may take as much as a week to return power to everyone affected. (We were among the lucky ones; we had power in the morning.)

DD woke up in the middle of the night, frightened by the howling. She crawled into bed with us and wanted me to cuddle and comfort her. It took about an hour to get her back to sleep, but she was more relaxed after all the attention. (It's so nice to be more than "just a step-dad" to her.)

As you can see, there was some damage throughout the neighborhood. The feeding gremlins I wrote about in my previous post were shingles from our roof. I picked up about 100 of them from the front yard and our roof showed bare wood in places. (Our landlord, though, took the afternoon off and got everything fixed very quickly, which we're very grateful for.) As you can see from the photo, though, other homes fared worse.

Here's the other side of the garage shown in the opening picture. It seems the wind picked up a railroad tie and pitched it through the roof of a nearby garage. I don't believe anyone was hurt, though it could easily been a different story had the angle been a little different.

There was a variety of other damage, too. I saw a a broken tree limb hanging precariously from the power line down the street.

A few blocks away, a fallen street light scattered broken glass across the road.

All in all, we feel very lucky having gotten off so lightly.