We have been out of touch with the rest of the word since Sunday afternoon. They weather service projected severe thunderstorms for last weekend, but we went all weekend with no rain. What they did not know was that instead of rain we were going to get hurricane strength winds of 60 t0 70 mph with gusts up t0 75mph.

We were completely oblivious to the storm raging outside as we sat in church Sunday afternoon. I could tell that it was a bit windy out from the window but was not prepared for the strength of the wind when we went outside. Trying to get to the car the children were struggling to walk in a straight line and the bits of leaves flying around in the air hurt when they hit you. The whole drive home we past street after street with fallen trees, broken branches, leaning road signs, swaying traffic lights. On the highway there was small debris blowing everywhere. Upon approaching our neighborhood there were branches and leaves strewn throughout the roads, more houses with broken trees, shingles flying, siding loosening.

We arrived at home to find the tree in our front yard cracked in half, luckily lying in the sidewalk and not in our house. The power had apparently gone out around 1:30. So we unloaded and settled in to wait out the rest of the storm. A few hour later a piece of metal on the side of our house came loose. I could hear it flopping around in the wind making awful screeching, scrapping, banging noises. It was attached by only a few nails. I really just wanted it to fall off. It was getting twisted and mangled by the wind, so would need to be replaced and I was worried that it was going to damage some other part of the house. Finally it did break loose, but we never found it. By the end of the day we were left with a few missing shingles, the metal off the side of the house, a fallen tree and no electricity.

The power was out for about 55 hours. They did tease us by turning on the power early Tuesday morning then taking it away again just a few hours later. We are lucky to have power back now. The report is that 21,000 local residents are still without power and it could be another day or two until power is restored.

Driving around there are lot of others a lot worse off. Damage to other house include roofs with half their shingles missing, sides of houses with big chunks of missing siding, trees down everywhere, a fallen chimney and who knows what else I have not seen.

I am happy to report that we are all safe and have wonderful friends and neighbors that helped us get through the power outage. It has been like camping out with street potluck BBQs and picnics to help us have warm found to eat and not let thawing food go to waste. We are very blessed and thankful.