A terrifying storm ripped through our area last night. I was home watching it from the front porch — 60 mph gusts whipping the 50 or so tall trees surrounding our house. One tree between us and the neighbors on our left split its top, and we lost a few large branches in the back, but our house escaped unscathed.

A home adjacent to the one behind us had a tree hit it. We chatted briefly with the neighbor behind us. He said they were putting up some tarp and cleaning up broken glass. The irony is that the neighborhood behind us is one of those where they clear all the trees, then build the houses, so I didn’t think there were any trees to fall on houses over there. Meanwhile, none of our 50 trees fell on us.

The power went out around 7:15 last night because of the falling branches. According to the power company there are 350,000 homes affected in the area and that outages could last through the weekend. Great! Did I mention Sherri’s family arrives tomorrow evening?

Time to head home and throw some steaks on the grill before they go bad. I bought meat at Sam’s Club yesterday, mere minutes before losing power. Figures.

Pictures to follow soon.