We’ve been wishing and hoping for rain for weeks – and the storms have been all around us and never made it to our little corner of the county. Last week we watched the storms pass all around us (watching on the radar) and never make it to our house. We could see the storms, literally, on the other side of the highway and yet we never got a drop of rain.
My theory is that the mountain messes with the air flow and it has to be a pretty strong storm to have the energy to go over the mountain and reach us. I’m not a meteorologist by any means, but after living close to the mountain for almost 20 years and watching the storms do this little dance around the mountain, that’s the theory I’ve come up with.
See the ridge of the mountain there above my neighbor’s house?
Last night, we got “the big one.”
It was a heck of a storm… or series of storms, I guess. It started around six in the evening and when I finally went to sleep around 3:30 it was still raining, although the energy of the storm had diminished and it was just raining instead of the light and wind and sound show we’d had for most of the night.
We had hail, (lots of it) wind, LOTS of rain, thunder and lightning. The dogs were scared to death, the kitties were hiding under things and the kiddies were not much better. Our power went out around 7ish and didn’t come back on until around 3:30. (which is why I kept waking up off/on until then – I was on “alert” in case it did come back on and worried SuperMan would oversleep and miss work, too)
We pulled out the kerosene lanterns and ate dinner by candlelight. Cleaning the kitchen afterward was a bit of a challenge – how can you tell if the dishes are clean when it’s 80% dark in the house? – but we managed. I can’t tell you how happy I was that I’d already cooked dinner in the crock pot and so when the power went out it was no big deal. All we had to do was plate up the food and eat. See? Planning ahead is a good thing.
Then, because we couldn’t do much else, we headed upstairs to get ready for bed.
The girls were a mess – Big Girl was traumatized by the no power thing. She railed against Mother Nature messing up her nighttime routine and how would she ever sleep without her fan and the “night light” of the neighborhood street light? Little Bit was hot, tired, cranky and had leg cramps. Poor SuperMan and I were just so tired we were ready to collapse with or without the kids joining us in sleep. Finally, around 11, I put them both in bed with me and while SuperMan took a cool shower the girls fell asleep. He escaped to another bedroom to sleep and I “slept” with the two whirling dervishes all night. It wasn’t too bad, heat-wise, because we had the bedroom porch door open and a nice cool breeze was blowing in. It was humid, of course, but not intolerable.
When the power came on at 3:30 it woke me up when all of the electronics in the house came on in a simultaneous “whump” and surge of power. I got up and turned off all the lights we’d left on and re-set the clocks and thermostats in the house. Then I snuggled back down and tried to go back to sleep.
This morning, our yard looks like, well, like a storm went through (duh) – lots of limbs, leaves, etc. are down. But my flowers are happy little campers. They loved the rain.
The hydrangeas are a little bruised from the hail, but pretty still
The lilies are happy, too. Lots of new blooms today
So, for now, we’ll just say thanks for the rain, the cooler temperatures, and the adventure of “camping” in our house last night. I’m just glad no trees fell in our yard and no one had any serious issues.
rain,family stories,parenting,storms
I love storms, but seriously sometimes they scare me to death! Losing power is when I start to get scared...but the camping indoors thing sounds really fun! Next time, we're going to have to try that! :)
Posted by: Courtney Walsh | 16 June 2011 at 12:21 PM
I'm learning that sometimes it's all about how you "position" things (to use a corporate lingo term) and how you approach life. Rather than being freaked out about no power, I just related it to camping and it seemed less scary and more of an adventure! :-)
Thanks for stopping by!!
Posted by: Lois Houston | 16 June 2011 at 12:42 PM
How lucky that your dinner was already done - Somehow, it's always easier to cope on a full stomach...
We tend not to have such serious "weather" as other areas nearby. I think that's because our town is sort-of in a bowl, with hills round it - storms and weather conditions sort-of roll round the edges. But we do get storms and heavy rain sometimes. In fact, we have had stormy weather all afternoon here today - wind, heavy showers, sunshine, more showers, more wind... just now, there is a dry spell, with thunder rumbling away in the distance. But not quite as spectacular as your storm I think!
We had a long power outage early in the spring. The power was off from around 1pm til aboug 8:30-9pm. We hadn't made our dinner.. but luckily it was only a local problem and the pizza takeaway in town was still up and running (hee hee!). So we had a candlelit pizza picnic, then got out the board games, lit all the camping lamps and candles and played games til DS went to bed. The power came back just after he had fallen asleep, so we were all ok! It was quite an adventure at the time - and in fact we enjoyed ourselves, especially the games, so that DS wants to have regular "games evenings" now!
Glad nothing really bad happened during your storm and that you all managed to cope.
And like you, we are thankful for the rain, after the driest spring in our area since 1910!
Posted by: Lizzie | 18 June 2011 at 12:07 PM
Well, after I wrote this post, I rode up to the front of our subdivision. Turns out our neighbors were not so lucky - a few had trees on their houses, but no one was hurt, thankfully. It has been an eventful summer with lots of these storms popping up lately... we're learning to roll with the punches and head for cover when they come!
Posted by: Lois Houston | 20 June 2011 at 02:20 PM