Getting Ready for Our Date

I have always been a fan of extreme weather. I even considered working towards a degree in meteorology. But there is nothing like coming up against extreme weather face to face to give you a healthy respect for the power that is Mother Nature.

Saturday night Dan and I were getting ready to leave the house. We had a date. I had purchase they Might Be Giants tickets (it was supposed to be a surprise) and we had a babysitter due to arrive at any minute.

I was standing by the back window watching the edge of storm heading towards us. I decided that it looked pretty nasty and was typing in “weather.com” when the wind began to pick up. Instead of dying down after what seemed like a huge gust, the wind continued to build. I glanced out side, my pulse beginning to race, and saw the trees being blown sideways.

“Dan, get the baby!” I yelled over the noise of the wind, and watched as Dan grabbed Bronwen off the couch and raced by me into the basement.

We stood in the middle of the basement watching the wind blow outside. After only about a minute, the wind died down and we cautiously climbed the steps to see what was happening.

I looked out the window and the first thing I saw was a whole section of fence lying in our yard. The second thing I noticed was that our shade tent was gone!

“Dan, our fence is destroyed!” I yelled. “And the tent is gone!”

We went outside to assess the damage. Half of the fence had been blown over. One piece was in our yard, the other in our neighbors'. The large tent had been blown to the other side of the yard and was broken in three places. A large oak branch had fallen from the tree and smashed into our other neighbors’ fence, missing Dan’s car by a few feet.

I am pretty sure that the time it took for the wind to pick up and then die down couldn’t have been more than ninety seconds, but the damage it did was impressive.