Blown Away

Last Thursday was an eventful windstorm with record winds as high as 100 mph. School was cancelled due to no power, entire trees were downed, wood fences crumpled, shingles scattered everywhere on the ground, trampolines in the wrong backyards, siding melted off sides of houses - and this was just in our neighborhood!

After retrieving my daughters from their 20-minute day of school, shortest day of school on record for them so far, we holed up in the house while the storm raged around us. The forceful winds just pounded into our garage door and was even pushing the front door so hard, I had to dead bolt it to keep it from getting blown open.

I went out to take down the flag and could hardly stand up straight and was fearful of all the debris flying around. Closing the garage door was almost impossible with each wind gust pushing the garage door back up when I returned from picking up the girls.

My neighbor across the street called to tell me her wood fence had fallen down. While chatting with her on the phone and watching the storm rage from my front window, I noticed my other neighbor's shingles were flying off her roof like loose paper! I had my friend I was chatting with on the phone look over to my house, and she said I had several patches ready to fly off as well!

The storm finally settled down about mid-morning, but the aftermath was ridiculous throughout the neighborhood. John was out of town, so this is what he got to come home to...

My loving neighbor came over and got on the roof to assess our damage and covered up some of the really bad sections - thank goodness, because it snowed that night.

John spent a good chunk of Saturday up on the roof putting new shingles on. Just what he wanted to be doing in December with temperatures below freezing.


Our chimney cap even blew off in the storm. Good thing some of our neighbors on the street behind us retrieved it so we could get it put back on.

All-in-all, we fared pretty well, considering the damage that many other neighbors experienced. Thank goodness for insurance, though this time, we didn't sustain enough damage to warrant a new roof (shucks darn, because we need a new one in the next couple of years!).

On Sunday, we were expected to get another really bad wind storm with winds up to 70 mph, so not as bad as the first one, but pretty serious. There was still a lot of debris throughout the neighborhood, and trees still downed. During church, it was announced that the ox was in the mire and a work group was put together right after church to go around and clean up all of the debris so it wouldn't be flying around in the storm.

John and the older two girls set out with the trailer and got to work cleaning up one of our neighbor's trees. John said the lineup to the dump was outrageously long because everyone else was doing the same thing.

The second storm didn't end up arriving, but at least the neighborhood is cleaned up, families are getting their houses assessed by their insurance companies, or like us, doing the work themselves and getting everything back in order. I'm so grateful John is able and willing to get on the roof to fix it for our clan as I am devastatingly afraid of being on the roof.

Merry Christmas and a Happy Newish Roof!