© 2006 Mike Arst

"It was a dark and stormy night . . ." --
the worst windstorm here in a long time

In the middle of the night, at the height of a massive windstorm, a
tree on the property next door snapped and blew over, barely missing
the neighbor's house. (Our house appears in the background, at left.)

The snapshots here show what we saw a few hours after the storm blew past.

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Laurie went to bed at about 11 PM. The power had failed (we'd expected that). I
stayed up, reading by candle-light. There were a lot of unexpected sounds during
the windstorm -- BOOM! among them (probably the sound of power transformers
blowing out). It might also have been the sound of trees falling. Many fell over
during the storm all over this area, striking cars and houses, and, I'm sad to say,
causing a few deaths. There were other odd noises during the storm --
groaning sounds, for instance. I don't know what they were.

Twice, around 1 AM, I heard a strange scraping sound. I couldn't identify it. At about
1:30 -- WHOOSH! THUMP! That sound, I understood. I knew a tree had fallen nearby.
We'd been worried about this -- so had everyone else in the area who doesn't live
in the middle of a football field or a parking lot. Click "next" for more . . .

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