I Think I Saw This In A Movie Once

I had great plans last night. I was going to get my lawn mowed, buy food, kick back with a cold one, and get caught up on reruns of Lost. Productivity, good eats, a daily allowance of barley & hops, and quality television - the stuff perfection is made of. But plans were about to be changed for me.

I got out of work late, ran home, changed quick as Superman (but not in a phone booth), and headed to get groceries. Afterwards, I stopped at my mom's to see what needed done. My nephew was there helping her, so I got off scot-free. On my way to her house, I had noticed that the temperature on the bank clock was 109 degrees. How on earth could I be expected to mow in that kind of heat?

When I got home, I started food cooking, and headed out into hell's waiting room to mow. My bro-in-law had dropped off one of his mowers to use. When I got ready to start it, I realized that instead of a handle on the cord, there was a metal ring. Great, a jimmy-rigged setup. I grabbed the ring, pulled with all my might. It was at this point that nearly all the flesh on my fingers was practically ripped off as the cord snapped back and the metal ring tried to take my digits with it. And the mower didn't start.

Less than pleased, I headed into the house, noticing that the wind was picking up and the sky was a little dark. Crap. The one night I had time to mow, and it would probably rain. At least it had cooled down some, so if I hurried I might get finished. I cleaned up my hand, found no ligaments hanging loose on their own, so I figured I'd put on gloves and try 'er again.

I headed for the front door when I heard a weird roaring noise. I opened the door to the oddest sight I've seen in a long time. The sky was completely Kermit green. Across the street, I initially thought I saw a funnel cloud headed toward my house, but I then realized that the wind was just swirling through the open space between the funeral home and apartment building over their dirt road. Well, actually I realized it when the gust of dirt hit me in the face, but I digress. But the freakiest part of it was the two trees in my front yard. Both of them were bent over almost in half. It was like the footage you see on the Weather Channel of a hurricane. I have a newfound sympathy for those on the west coast right now.

The rain started coming down in sheets and the wind was like I have never seen it (and hard wind is a staple in NE). I suddenly remembered the mower was sitting out uncovered. I ran to my back door and opened it. There in my back yard, I saw that a huge limb had fallen. And landed on my bike. I stood there pondering my good luck, and just then a huge chunk of hail came through the door and landed on my foot. I shut the door. Screw the mower.

I headed back to the front of the house to see if my car was getting hit as well. Most of the hail was pea- to marble-sized, but as I stood there a chunk the size of a golf ball hit my screen door. No, naturally, I ran outside to grab it so I could put it in the freezer. Thankfully, the big stuff was few and far between, so my car may have made it through unscathed.

Then the electricity went out, came on, went out, and so on. It was severely cramping my tv viewing. My nephew called freaking out (he's petrified of storms, thanks to his pansy mother) and I could hear my mom spazzing in the background. "What's she all worked up about?" I asked. My mom is usually unfazed by storms. "Oh, the wind blew a bunch of sand in the patio door and it's all over everything and I'm walking in it and it's going to be tracked all over the house and she'll never get it out of the carpet and why aren't I in the basement?" he replied. Oookkkaayy. Way to have priorities.

I assured him I was alive, but he was upset that his parents and my grandpa weren't answering the phone. As it turned out, my grandpa was sleeping and land lines were out all over town and most cell phones weren't working. Go figure. On an average day, my cell service is crap while everyone else is happily chatting. Then a storm hits, my phone works great, and now there is no one to talk to.

The storm just kept getting worse. I hear a huge crack in front of my house. My beautiful tree in my front yard had just gotten a huge limb in the middle broke out of it. It narrowly missed taking the balcony off the front of the house. What would I have done if I could no longer grill out high up in the air? It would have been tragic. The wind was hitting so hard that it sounded like there was someone knocking on every window in the place. If my sister had been there, I'd have started yelling, "Auntie Em! Auntie Em!" just to make her a little more paranoid.

Crap. Our power just went out for 2 hours. I just lost part of this post, but I'll try to remember what brilliance was here.

The storm lasted for about an hour and a half. As it turned out, we had 100 mi/hr straight winds. In some parts of town, there were also tornados. One lady saw a funnel cloud come down, go back into the cloud, and come back down as four tornados. North of town, there was baseball-sized hail that broke out windows. The rest of the town got pea- to golf ball-sized hail. And there was 3/4 in of rain.

The Methodist church lost a huge chunk out of the middle of their roof and one wall was sucked out. The damage was so bad, it will have to be completely rebuilt. All the windows were blown out of the high school. The lumberyard lost their roof, which for some reason I find hilarious. Enormous blue spruce, cedar, hackberries, etc. all over town were completely uprooted. The new courthouse lost most of its roof. One guy lost half of his house, and the family next door to my boss had two limbs land on both their vehicles.

As for my family, a tree split in half and landed on my mom's barn. A limb fell and took out one power line there as well. I also had a tree uprooted and land on a power line in my back yard. My sister lost half her huge cottonwood and it landed on their fence. No serious damage to the fence, though. Power is out in half the town, as is cable. I got to go home early for lunch, as everything went dead here. Of course, it came back in time for me to have to work again. *Sigh*

Thankfully, there were no casualties and no injuries reported yet. In a town of 3,000 even one would have hit hard. As much as I make fun of our alcoholic volunteer firemen (a.k.a. "the pissin' crew"), they do a great job in times like this. They were out all night, making sure all the elderly were ok, including my grandpa, who slept through the storm (!) until I woke him up. Volunteers have been working hard, cleaning up as much as possible so the emergency crews could get through. Streets are still closed all over town, but maybe by the time I get off work, things will be closer to normal. I'll post some pics once I get them back.

Maybe I'll mow tonight after I clean up all the debris in my yard. Then again, they're predicting rain.