The Storm

As some of you may have heard there was quite the storm that hit our area last Friday. It was no tornado or hurricane, though wind gusts were clocked up to 79 mph, but a "derecho" formed from this masive heat wave we are experiencing and quite damaging. A derecho is a thunderstorm that mimics a hurricane and/or tornado. So fridaty night Andy and I were watching a movie when the storm hit. It started with an eerie dead calm night, not a breath of wind and lightning that continued to light up the sky. So I called Andy up from the movie around 10:30 PM so he could watch the lightning storm with me and as we're watching it goes from dead calm lightning to gale force winds with horizontal rain splattering against our windows! So like the California idiots that we are (we don't know what real storms look like, it's exciting if we hear one thing of thunder) we pull up some chairs in front of our sliding glass door and watch! Then at the fullest intensity the power goes out and I'm thinking that's not good and that I don't remember storms being this scary, even in houston. Well we wake up the next morning and there is still no power which means no air conditioning and that the $200 worth of food and 6 hour long grocery trip with a newborn will all go to waste! I nearly cried at the prospect of having to go grocery shopping again. Well we were up early so we went to Home Depot and it was pandemonium everywhere with people trying to buy ice and generators and water and fuel. Well it was lucky we were early enough for water and propane but no generator and no fuel for us. I've never experienced anything quite like it. Luckily we had plenty of food in our food storage and an emergency radio in our 72 hour kit. We would have had water but we jut moved here and weren't stocked up so for those of you following the blog get your food storage and emergency kits ready!!! It will happen when you leat expext it! Below are some pictures of the aftermath. We were lucky and got our power back saturday ngiht but for most people it was a full 5 days before they had power. God took pity on me and answered my prayer not to have to go gorcery shopping again!