blown away

It seems like I haven't posted for awhile (sorry!).

This week we had a wind storm that was completely crazy.  The weather reports said it was coming, but seriously, how often are they completely right?!  We thought we'd have some wind, but nothing like it really was.

At 2 am I woke up to the winds howling, the house completely shaking, and stuff thumping/banging against the house.  I couldn't believe that everyone else was still sleeping.  It was loud (and honestly, the shaking house was freaky).  Eventually, it did wake everyone up and we ended up with kids in our bed.

We got up at 7am and started looking around.  Our basketball hoop was laying on its side with the backboard gone and the rim bent.  Our garbage cans (and garbage) was down the driveway.  We had roof shingles, parts of fences, and leaves in the yard.

The power went out.  We knew there was enough hot water for at least one shower, so Kyle and Kaden jumped in.  It came on long enough for me to get a shower, but then was out the rest of the day.  We hadn't heard school was cancelled, so we jumped in the van to take Kaden to school.  We got there and there was no power or heat, and his teacher told us to go home.  The winds were still really strong and were rocking the van enough that both boys were crying and we just wanted to get home.

After being out for a few minutes, we saw huge trees uprooted, fences partially or completely destroyed,  street and business signs bent and/or missing,  roofs missing shingles or completely exposed, windows blown out, etc.  It looked like a war zone.

The power was out all day, and it was cold in the house.   We ended up going down to Riverton to spend the night with my parents (turns out the power came back on sometime that night).  The boys thought it was a huge party, and a pretty great ending to a pretty lousy day.

School was cancelled for Friday.

Estimates are still coming in, but the latest says that the storm caused approximately $20 million dollars in damages.  102 mile/hour wind gusts were recorded.  6 semi trucks flipped on the freeway (right by our house) because of the winds, and the freeway was closed for hours.  The city of Centerville was declared to be in a state of emergency.  Kyle had no power at work for a couple of days, and a church where he was on Saturday for a funeral was still without heat.

Crazy.  

Thankful that we were all safe, and that our damage was pretty minimal compared to others in the neighborhood.

Bosten's broken window:

The basketball hoop is toast:

The roof:

The view from our front porch...the fence across the street gone:

 One of the neighbor's trees:

New hole on the roof:

The other neighbor's fence:

Shingles and fence boards in the yard (it actually was worse later):

More roof shingles gone:

 Looking through a couple of yards...all the fences gone.

 This is the only fence we lost...part of the garden:

Back neighbor's vinyl fence got hammered:

Just saw another report that they're expecting more crazy wind tonight.