Storm Chasers

Since moving back east we've heard stories of crazy thunderstorms, rainstorms,etc. Heck we even lived through one in Nebraska (see my first post).  However, within 2 days of each other we saw some of the craziest storms we've ever seen. And since then have had the most magnificent lightening storms I have ever seen.  So here's a little bit piece of what we've seen

The video really doesn't do it justice, but the wind was howling like crazy and every 10 seconds or so you'd hear thunder rumble. the trees were bending, nobody was out walking which is weird here because everyone loves running, biking, walking etc and there's a nice path right by our house. I'll take a picture of that sometime so you can see where I love running. It was a crazy storm..but nothing like the one 2 days later.  You can see in the picture above the umbrellas are collapsed and ok by the pool. On July 1st, the storm hit so suddenly no one collapsed them and the whole thing (umbrella and tables included) BLEW BY OUR ENTIRE BUILDING. It flew a good 70 yds until it was stopped by the tower neighboring ours. And the people running out of the pool area did nothing to help. Left all the others still open to blow the same way. I swear some people...  Anyway it was quite magnificent. we ran up to Carson's apartment (floor 5-our mere 2 was not a good enough view) to see what was going on all around us.  Branches were breaking. I thought trees were going to blow over no joke, rain dumped like I've never seen before, lightning lit up the sky, the power went out (it was flickering as we went upstairs, luckily Weston was smart enough to remind me to use the stairs...) and for a little while we had hail the size of nickels. CRAZIEST THING EVER.  But it made me so happy. I don't know why but I have a deep love for extreme storms. Maybe I should have been a tornado chaser, I don't know. But I get a good kick out of them. Especially when loud, cracking thunder is involved.  However, my love quickly died when our power did not come immediately back on.  In fact, it was out for the next 10 hours.  

We made due, eating cereal to get rid of our milk, and carrots.  Not a lot to eat without your heat sources. Weird how much we rely on power.  Weston and I were talking about how scary it would be during "end-of-the-world" type situations when power's out, people need food, water isn't running, etc. People were going crazy as it was just without T.V. for the Sunday afternoon.  I just hope I'm prepared for whatever comes.....

Eating his snack.  With his handy dandy headlamp. Lots of people didn't have any kind of light sources. And the lights on the stairs had gone out, too, so it was pitch black if you didn't have a light. Scary! I had nightmares of murderers around the corner before we remembered our light, believe me.

I could've probably passed for one such murderer, huh?  Didn't get ready in the morning before church cause we were late and then the power outage=scary Danielle!  All in all it was a fun slash scary and disappointing day off work. The only thing we had wanted to do all day long- that we had been looking forward to all week long- was watching the Euro cup final, and because of no power we didn't get to watch it. Sad :( but we had fun playing in the dark, instead, and walking in the rain.  Oh and later that night we went on an eerie walk through town while all the power was still out and were amazed at how dark it was.  Luckily our home got power back the same day. Wheaton, our little town, was without power for 3 days!  Completely dark at night, no people around. Scary. I was glad to have my strong husband with me!  And grateful for the technology we enjoy every day!