Blow Me Down!

Wow, that was exciting.

Today was the second day of school for the Mess Girls and as luck and the precociousness of midwest weather would have it, the STORM OF THE DECADE! hit with all its fury at precisely the minute school was to be released. It literally takes me less than 5 minutes from my garage to the elementary school parking lot. As I pulled out of my driveway it was thundering and raining lightly, by the time I got to the end of my street, it was raining sideways and trees were blowing at a 45 degree angle. I pulled into the school parking lot and shortly the principal was knocking on my window yelling for all parents to get their butts into the school where it was safe. Unbeknown to me, there was a tornado warning in effect for our area.

After waiting for the all clear to allow the students to be released, I was able to collect Little E and proceed into to town to pick up Mini Me. She was supposed to have an orthodontist appointment to fix a broken bracket at 4pm. But every road but one leading from our neighborhood into town was closed by either flash flooding, downed trees or downed power lines. A typically 10 minute drive took me over 25 minutes. After arriving at the middle school I called the orthodontist and told them I would not be attempting to drive another 25 miles in the opposite direction of home through floods and torrents. Instead we proceeded to make our way home and upon turning down our street we were greeted with the above sight.

We enjoy the beauty of living in a very old, established, tree lined neighborhood. But when Mother Nature decides to go off on a rant it can be very disconcerting and downright dangerous. Fortunately for us and our neighbors, no person or property was damaged when this grand dame of trees took a header into the street. It does mean that my car, along with at least three other neighbors' cars are now parked down at the end of the street until the road crew gets this cleared. I don't think our little "no outlet" cul de sac will be high on the priority list tonight when half the county has been decimated by this storm. The best we can hope for is that the next line of storms slated to come through won't be as bad as this one and our cars will be safe out in the open for the night.