Derecho

I had never heard of a "Derecho Storm" before...

On Friday night, Dustin and I were just hanging out watching a movie while the kids were sleeping.  All of the sudden, we heard some sort of a bang.  We have been doing some painting and other work around the house and I thought maybe something fell upstairs.  Then we looked out the back window and the trees were blowing all over the place!  Dustin grabbed his phone and tried to look at the radar, but it wasn't coming up fast enough so he said just to grab the kids and get in the basement.  You don't have to tell this momma that twice!  I ran upstairs and grabbed Rachel while Dustin got Gavin (and a flashlight).  We all ran down to the basement , with the dog at my heels the whole time!  The power kept flickering and the radar just showed a huge line of red coming at us.  Dustin ran upstairs a few times to check on things, but the kids and I stayed down with the dog.  And just as a side note, as crazy as Zoe can be and as much as she can drive us crazy, she's a GREAT dog!  All I had to do was say her name and she was right at my feet with both kids in my lap.  

As soon as things calmed down a little, we headed upstairs to check things out.  The kids stayed in the living room for a little since I was still a little nervous and the power was still flickering.  

Dustin may have found a few pieces of siding on the street and brought them in while the wind was still blowing (not nearly as hard) so we wouldn't lose them completely.  

The next morning we found out that we had hurricane force winds that night.  We were very "lucky" and really didn't have any damage.  We found all the siding and Dustin was able to put it back on pretty easily.  We did spend about 5 hours Saturday morning cleaning up the yard though.  We never really lost power, but cable is out.  

We ended up being without cable/internet until Tuesday.  But that is nothing to complain about... some people were without power for 10 days!  And of course we were in a major heat wave at the same time, so more pop-up storms were happening nearly every night.  Some people would regain power then lose it again that night, or never lost it in the first storm, but lost it 4 days later- it was crazy!  The power company was doing a great job under the circumstances though!