Day 3: No power

If you haven’t heard about it on the news already, we had a killer storm - a microburst - blow through on Sunday afternoon out of the blue.  Bryan was on a day trip to Arkansas and we didn’t even get a notification that it was going to rain that day.  I was at my parents’ house, 20 minutes north of where we live, when the skies suddenly darkened and the winds picked up.  We pulled the dog inside from the yard and within five minutes, the house was getting hammered with severe wind and rain.  With the winds howling like they were, I certainly thought that there was going to be a tornado watch, but it was “only” a severe thunderstorm warning.  Watching the weather from a state over, Bryan told us that the storm was supposed to be over at around 2:30 pm, so around that time, despite the rain, Bowie and I made a mad dash for the car and started heading home.  There was flash flooding and water built up on all of the roads but we powered through it only to get stuck in a traffic stand still less than five miles from our house.  The lights on the road were out and we spent the next 20 minutes crawling through a four-way stop. 

View from the front door
When we turned down the street into our neighborhood, it looked like a tornado (or hurricane) had blown through.  Fences had been knocked over down, large tree limbs littered the road, and we had to weave around debris to make it to the house.  Seeing the damage from the trees around our house, I had feared the worst for ours.  We have three large live oak trees and a tall magnolia tree in our front yard.  Despite the 70 mph winds from the north, they were still standing.  In fact, all of the leaves and branches that were blown into our yard was from our neighbor across the street, who has a massive red oak.  Further down the street, a branch on a large sycamore went down, burying four cars beneath it and totaling one of them completely.  It continues to block the entire road at this point.  The last time I saw damage close to this order of magnitude was when I was in Houston after Hurricane Ike. 

Further down our street, covering the road and four cars
Of course with all of the trees branches blown over and knocking down power lines, we had no power.  No power in Texas in June.  The cell phone towers were down and my cell service was spotty at best, so I had no idea if Bryan made it through the storm (or around it) or when he was getting home that afternoon.  I took the dog around the block to check out how bad the other streets were hit and was in the process of picking up twigs from our yard when he drove up.  He said that they had clocked speeds at 107 mph at the airport and several small planes were ripped up from their tie downs and blown across the runway.  Their hanger didn’t have power but he and his copilot were able to land and make it in.  He had two bags of ice with him, and we dumped it into the cooler with water and beer.  That night, we showered using the light from Bryan’s Coleman lantern.


Today, we’re on day three without power.  I’ve been going in to work to charge devices and check work email.  This afternoon, Bryan emptied out our fridge  Our neighbors, who had been running a generator for the past two days, stopped yesterday afternoon.  They likely decided it was cheaper to toss everything than to run $500 worth of gasoline to keep their groceries.  The neighborhood is eerily quiet at night.  You’ll see the occasional person walking their dog by flashlight but no cars out and about.  We have solar powered landscaping lights and those are the only lights on our street.  We’ve lucked out as the storm brought some cooler weather with it.  We’ve slept with all of the windows in the house open and last night it got down to the mid-60s.  Honestly, I’m not complaining.  Grubhub delivered dinner last night and we still have running hot and cold water.  Our house is fine and standing and both of our vehicles didn’t suffer any damage either.  Fingers crossed that we get power back before the heat comes back around tomorrow.

In case you’re wondering, the horses are fine and doing way better than we are.  The barn got power back the same day it lost it so the fans and lights are working.  There are also no trees around the property so there wasn’t any damage to any of the barn.  One of the outdoor arenas has been flooded but otherwise everything is okay.


Comments

  1. Oh my gosh!! I did see this briefly on the news here:( I'm so sorry to read this, Ruth. I'm glad that you guys are all ok, that Mae and the gang are all ok and that there was no damage to the house. That's so freaking scary though, and to have no power...we lost power for 2 days back in the early 2000 and I thought that was bad!

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    1. We had to throw out everything in the fridge yesterday but the power came back on at 7 pm. We made it and no one killed each other and the house is still standing!

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  2. OMG gosh. First off glad you are okay.

    SECOND OF ALL OMG WE LIVED IN HOUSTON during Hurricane Ike.....How funny is that? We had no power after the storm and they evacuated us before it (we had to leave town with 4 dogs in our car and go to Austin). We lived in the Clear Lake area. We had to leave the parakeet and cat behind on the 2nd floor. They were fine. But our fence went down. We also had views like that on our street with cars under trees so we were so lucky. Our next door neighbor literally lost her roof and our house was untouched!

    But we had five days of no power once we were back (I had to drive to the closest town with power (about 2 hours away) so i could finish a freelance assignment.....and we lost all in the two fridges. ICK horrible

    Crazy times....

    Glad you have power again.

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    1. I lived in the Heights and the condo I was in only lost power for a few hours - we were super lucky! I was actually out of town during the hurricane so I came back to the city looking like a zombie apocalypse. I can't even imagine what it would be like to have animals during that storm. All of that being said, I really loved living in Houston.

      We're glad power is back! It's nice having internet and the fridge again :) They finally cleared the tree on the street as well so we can now drive through.

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  3. Oh my gosh, I am so glad that you and your family are okay and that your house didn't get damaged! But this must have been so scary especially with all those downed trees! I was always so scared of something like this happening when I lived in Houston (the Heights area) because my husband (who lived there before me) had experienced Ike. He had talked about how this one large tree fell and nearly missed the side of his house! Honestly, it was one of the reasons why I was glad we ended up moving to Austin where the weather is a little less crazy...and definitely less humid!

    http://roadesque.com

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    1. I think regular tree trimming can definitely help with this kind of thing and I plan to have someone out this fall to look at ours. These freak storms make you think about having back up plans, which we should have anyway. All in all, we were lucky and the damage to the entire area could have been way worse. Austin has been getting some massive hail this spring - luckily all of that has been missing us in Dallas!

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    1. Thanks - some others in our neighborhood were not so lucky but we're grateful!

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  5. Oh no! I'm sorry you have to go through this but I'm so glad you're safe. Buy yourself extra chocolate or the best snacks to get you through!

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    1. I think we're going to buy ourselves some ice cream since all of ours melted and had to get tossed :///

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  6. Hey Rooth, I've heard about this massive storm on our Dutch news channel. It looked really frightening! We have colour codes to indicate weather situation: green is fine, yellow is mediocre weather, orange is heavy weather and red is heaviest and last week we had 3x code orange. We had heavy storm and heavy rainfall with thunder and such. Luckily we stayed unharmed. Stay safe Rooth! Xx

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    1. I'm glad you guys are weathering the storms as well. Has there been any flooding there?

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    1. Thanks! The storm blew through in an hour but we're still working through all the damage it caused. It's a mess around here

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  8. Whoa, that is scary. Glad to hear you have power back on and you're safe. Can't imagine how it must be for everyone who suffered a lot of damage. Not having power for 3 days is tough.

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    1. The storms this season have been crazy!

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  9. Yikes! I'm glad everything is okay and that at least it cooled down for you! It's so great everything was fine at your place and with the horses.

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  10. They were still standing??? You were so lucky!

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