A Windy Night

When we went to bed on Wednesday night I don't think Tim and I thought we would be woken up a few hours later by 80-100 mph winds. Tim got up first to check out the backyard and discovered that a huge branch from the avocado tree had broken off.  Thankfully, the tree house was still intact, except for the plastic sheets on the roof, which were now all over the yard.

With a tree branch down, but no other damage Tim and I tried to go back to sleep.  The wind was howling and things were banging around and we didn't get back to sleep.  We kept getting up when we heard loud noises and one of those loud noises was our patio structure landing upside down near the downed tree branch. Tim and I hurried out to the backyard and got most of the canopy off and moved the structure in front of the garage, so it wouldn't take flight across the yard.  While we were out in the backyard dealing with the patio structure I could not believe the force of the wind.  It was insane.  I have never experienced wind that strong.

Our patio structure had a few bent poles and Freddy helped destroy the canopy by chewing it...If you look closely at this picture you will see in the distance that our neighbor's shed is on top of their garage.  I had to take a double take and then take a picture because I thought for a moment that I was in Kansas because that's the type of thing you see in the mid-west. Insane!

                                               

                                               

The other damage we had in the yard was a branch from our neighbors pine tree which is laying on their garage and entwined with our power and telephone lines.  Thankfully, we haven't lost power yet and hopefully we don't.

Thursday morning came quick since we hadn't slept much. Tim went off to work and I got Trent up and ready for school just in case school was open, but it turned out it was closed. Trent and I didn't do much on Thursday.  I cleaned up the backyard filling up five trash cans with leaves and the backyard still looked like a tornado hit it.  It was a strange day to say the least.  The damage to the surrounding cities was incredible.  My parents and in-laws didn't have power for three days.  
School was closed again on Friday. Trent and I ventured out in the late morning and it was so surreal.  Trees were down everywhere, street lights were out, power was out all over and you could tell people were on edge.  I could not get to my parents house fast enough; I wanted to be off the road.
We spent Saturday morning cleaning up the backyard.  Tim's Dad brought over his chainsaw and got started on the tree branch.  He was so helpful and we are so thankful.
Hopefully, the surrounding cities get cleaned up and powered back up before too long.  We are so thankfully that we didn't have too much damage and definitely need to revisit our emergency supplies kit.