Just over a week ago, a tornado hit not that far away and a derecho* made a direct hit on our neighborhood widely admired for its majestic oaks, pines, maples, and blue spruce. It was originally a 400-acre farm that was platted for houses in 1929, and many trees in our part of the neighborhood were that old or older.
Tornado sirens went off at about a quarter of midnight but I couldn’t shelter in place because one of our Westies had to go out and pee.
The potty pen is a brick-bordered rectangle lined with pea stone alongside the patio behind our garage. With the thunder booming and lightning strobing, sirens wailing, I collared and leashed the pup and ventured out the six feet from the back door, hoping this wouldn’t be one of those times where he couldn’t make up his mind where to pee and looked like a skater doing figure eights. As he picked a spot and peed I was too dazed from sleep and alarm to be afraid. But one thought was very clear: “So this might be my last few moments on Earth.”
It wasn’t hyperbolic. Twenty-some years ago, after torrents of rain, trees in our neighbor’s yard fell into ours, taking out half of the fence, much of the landscaping, smashing the patio furniture and the hot tub cover and the top branches of hit the the roof, the back door, and blocked kitchen windows.
My spouse had just come in from pottying our dogs and suddenly I heard a boom, rushed to the kitchen and my view was obscured by a maze of thin branches. The three of them had escaped unexpected harm by five minutes or less.
Well, on the derecho night, my pup and I made it safely back into the house where power had gone out. Our pooch and my husband are sound sleepers and missed the tumult.
In the morning, we discovered our front and back yards covered with debris and one of our favorite trees, a crab apple with a lovely canopy, had suffered so much damage it was a goner. That was the beginning of damage assessment but as we discovered that day, with power company trucks filling the streets, we were lucky. Some houses a short walk away were hit and badly damaged and huge trees had been yanked out of the ground and others split in half or worse. One whole street looked like the kind of disaster zone you see on the news after a hurricane.
For four+ days we lived in a kind of tunnel, bombarded by the sound of chainsaws, wood chippers, trucks, and generators growling across the neighborhood.
Lev Raphael is the son of immigrants and the author of 27 books in genres from memoir to mystery. He has lived in his current home for 39 years. His substack is now and always will be free for subscribers.
*a line of intense, widespread, and fast-moving windstorms and sometimes thunderstorms that moves across a great distance and is characterized by damaging winds.
Image by Umkreisel-App from Pixabay
Whew! You were fortunate to make it through unscathed. When I lived in Florida, I remember a news story of a woman who went outside in a storm to bring her dog in the house when she was struck by lightning and killed.
Having (reluctantly) lived for 30+ years in Florida, I learned to respect the power of Mother Nature. Glad you're all right, and sorry about the trees.