The Storm

We awoke Wednesday morning at about 1:15 to a crazy bad thunderstorm. What actually woke us was the fan we run at night going off because we lost power. The lightning was unreal, lighting up the sky almost constantly and the thunder and wind were frightening. Allie was at our bedside in a matter of seconds. I came to get my phone so we'd have an alarm for the next morning. Kelly met me downstairs and Hannah and Corey soon joined us. We could see our neighbors out even in the middle of the night trying to see what was going on. I figured we'd have power back on within a few hours and clean up a few limbs the next day. Boy was I wrong. I got a call about 6:30 that school was cancelled, and that's when I realized we'd had a very serious storm. We got up when the sun came up and went outside to take a look around. We had only a few limbs down but my neighbors had a large limb on top of their car, another neighbor's pecan tree fell and yet another neighbor lost their trampoline to a large tree branch. We checked Facebook and found out the damage was much more severe around town. Like any good Americans would do in a time of disaster, we headed to Bojangles for breakfast and rode around to see what was happening. I was really shocked. My pastor had a tree fall through his living room and many people had large trees down, roof damage, and other damage. We spent the morning helping with limbs and waiting on power. Donnie headed to work to find his office had been flooded. By the afternoon it was clear we were probably going to be without power for at least the night. Thankfully our neighbor had power so we ran a drop cord from his garage and plugged in our refrigerator, TV and 2 fans. We didn't get power back for 36 hours, but many of my friends were without for 3 days. My kids school was still without power on Thursday so they were out of school that day too. I am very thankful we didn't sustain any serious damage. I have never experienced any storm quite like that. I can only imagine what the people of Alabama woke up to just a few weeks before us.

Here are a few pictures we took around town. Most of them were taken by Hannah on a bike ride through the neighborhood.